


Teenage Kicks

by Rheanna



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Age Regression, Angst, Drama, M/M, Time Travel, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-13
Updated: 2009-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:44:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rheanna/pseuds/Rheanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not about changing the past.  It's about letting the past change you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teenage Kicks

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Cathalin, Counteragent and Yahtzee for beta.

Rodney is woken by someone knocking loudly at his door.

He grunts and rolls over in the bed, figuring he can safely ignore it and go back to sleep for a while longer. It's probably only Sheppard, who's taken to passing Rodney's quarters on his morning run on days they have early-departure missions for the sole purpose of rousing him at some uncivilized pre-dawn hour. The knocking, Rodney knows, is only stage one of a complete strategy, which in its more advanced phases involves Sheppard paging him on the city-wide address system and, occasionally, using that damn gene of his to persuade the environmental systems to blast icy-cold air into Rodney's room. It's unfair, in Rodney's opinion: they've only ever had to reschedule one mission because he overslept, and it wasn't even an _important_ one. And right now Rodney could do without the ministrations of Lieutenant Colonel Punctual, because he was up until two a.m. fixing the long-range scanners, and he's not ready to face whatever crisis the new day is bound to bring just yet.

But Sheppard's being unusually persistent this morning and, instead of stopping after a few seconds, the knocking gets louder. Rodney burrows down deeper underneath the blankets and tries to tune it out. It doesn't work and, after a while, he's forced to admit that he's awake and is probably going to stay that way.

He reaches a hand out to the table next to the bed, feeling automatically for his radio. In the last four years, he's come to think of it as a detachable piece of himself, the last thing he takes off before he goes to sleep and the first thing he puts on when he wakes up.

It's not there.

Instead, his groping hand meets a number of unidentified, unexpected objects which, as far as he remembers, weren't on his bedside table when he collapsed exhausted into his bed in the early hours. He grabs something that he thinks must be his alarm clock, until it clicks under his thumb, and suddenly he's listening to the chorus of Madonna's _Like A Virgin_ playing at top volume.

Either someone's decided to set up the Pegasus galaxy's first classic pop radio station without telling him about it, or something is very wrong. Even half-awake, Rodney knows the second option is by far the more likely.

He sits bolt upright in the bed and stares at his surroundings in dawning horror. He's in his room. He's not in his Atlantis quarters; he's in his bedroom. _His_ bedroom, the room he slept in at his parents' old house, the room he grew up in, the room that hasn't even existed since the house, along with most of the street, was knocked down and replaced by a shopping mall in 1999.

Okay, so he's having a nightmare. A particularly vivid nightmare, of the kind that his subconscious takes particular delight in conjuring up to torment him. Maybe—yes!—maybe that fear-eating energy-crystal creature from M3X-387 is back again, only this time it's bypassed that superficial stuff about getting swallowed by whales and is feeding on the real meat of Rodney's nightmares, the horrors which are rooted so deeply in his mind that he's never been able to share them with anybody.

He hopes that's the explanation, because the alternative is that this is _actually happening_.

He fumbles with the radio and somehow his shaking hands manage to turn it off, cutting Madonna off just as she's getting to the part about feeling shiny and new. An all-too-familiar voice from outside the bedroom door says, "I know you're awake, Meredith. Not even you could sleep through that racket. I'm coming in there. And don't whine at me about privacy, young man, because I wash your underwear."

The door opens. Rodney stares.

"...Mom?" he says faintly.

"Don't give me that look," Irene McKay says irritably. "You may think it's acceptable to lounge in bed until nearly lunchtime, but while you live under my roof it isn't. Get up."

She turns and walks out again. "Mom," Rodney says again, more out of sheer, blank shock than anything else. Then it hits him that his voice is wrong, too. "Oh, no," he says, and hears the words come out sounding thinner and more nasal than they should. "Oh no, no, no, no—"

He throws off the blankets and runs out of the bedroom, his feet carrying him unthinkingly along the familiar route down the hall to the bathroom. He dashes inside like he's diving for cover in a firefight and locks the door behind him.

God, he remembers this bathroom. The avocado-colored toilet and wash-basin, the dent in the side of the bathtub from the time Jeannie had thrown a tantrum and kicked it, the ugly lemon-yellow tiles. It's been twenty years since he was last in this room, but the memories are so deeply rooted that it might only have been twenty minutes.

It's just a nightmare, he tells himself firmly, some kind of hallucination. He left all this behind a long time ago. It's not real. It can't be. It's not.

He takes long, slow breaths, trying not to hyperventilate. Then he goes over to the sink, braces his hands on either side of it, and looks into the bathroom mirror.

The reflection he sees there is very different to the one he's gotten used to looking at as he shaves in the morning. His face is thinner and more angular, with more pronounced cheekbones and a mouth which appears wider and lips which look fuller against his narrower profile. His skin is ivory-pale and his cheeks are smooth and flushed bright pink with panic. His hair is fine but much more abundant than in recent years; it's long enough to flop down on to his forehead. That feels strange: he keeps wanting to push his fringe out of the way. The expression in his eyes is one of dismay, mixed in with a kind of weary _what-this-time_ resignation that looks oddly out of place on his absurdly young features.

He's a teenager.

Any second now, Rodney thinks desperately, Sheppard's going to jog by and knock on his door for real and in a couple of hours he'll be on an alien planet, probably running for his life from Wraith or Replicators or, knowing the kind of luck they usually have, something even scarier. Any second now, he's going to wake up. Please, God, let him wake up now.

He starts to turn away from the sink, and as he does so, something catches his eye.

One of the tiles above the sink is cracked from side to side. Rodney doesn't remember how it got broken—it's possible it's been like that since the day they moved into the house—but he does remember that his father promised for years to fix it, never did, and that the cracked tile gradually achieved iconic status in his parents' fights, a symbol of every unfulfilled promise and unreasonable demand that festered between them. Until right now, he'd forgotten all about that broken tile, but there it is, right in front of him, mocking him with its mundane awfulness.

It's too authentic a detail for even the most fully realized of nightmares, and Rodney is forced to accept the appalling truth: this is really happening.

He flips down the lid of the toilet and sits on it, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

"How long are you going to be in there, Meredith?" his mother's voice demands from outside on the landing. "You're not the only person who lives in this house, you know."

_I want to go home_, Rodney thinks, but that's the problem, right there.

This _is_ home.

  
***

  
By the time Rodney has brushed his teeth, washed his face (no point in shaving: he won't need to do that regularly for another couple of years) and returned to his room, the initial shock has subsided enough that he's starting to think a little more clearly. He doesn't have any answers, but at least he's forming a list of pertinent questions. He needs to figure out (1) what year it is, (2) how he got here and, (3) how to _get the hell back_, and if he could work out (3) first, he could live in happy ignorance of (1) and (2).

Unfortunately, he's not going to find answers to any of those questions by doing what he wants to do, which is to stay in his room and not venture out again, at all.

There's a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt bearing the slogan _Future World Leader_ lying on the floor near the bed. They look relatively clean, so he puts them on. His body feels strange and foreign to him, like it's newly minted, fresh out of the packet. He remembers that he did most of his growing in his early teens, so he's not too much shorter than he should be, but he hasn't filled out yet, and his chest and shoulders are narrower and his arms and legs far skinnier than he's used to. He checks the inside of his forearm for the scar from where Kolya cut him and finds the skin unblemished. That should come as a relief—he hates that scar and the memory that goes with it—but instead its absence is strangely disconcerting, as if a part of who he is has been suddenly taken away from him.

He hesitates at his bedroom door as if it's an open Stargate with a particularly hostile world on the other side, then goes through.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, his mother is heating canned soup in a pan on the stove. She barely glances at Rodney as he comes in. "So you're not entirely nocturnal, after all. I was beginning to wonder." She walks past him to set a plate of ham sandwiches in the middle of the table, and Rodney takes the opportunity to check the date on the page-a-day calendar sitting on top of the counter.

It's Tuesday, July 24. The year is 1984.

Rodney thinks of George Orwell and decides that the universe doesn't just want him to suffer, it wants to make a joke at his expense at the same time.

Now he's got a date to work with, his memory fills in the remaining context for this little jaunt into his own personal hell. If it's the summer of 1984, then he's sixteen and Jeannie is seven. His parents' marriage is heading into the final stages of its ugly and inexorable disintegration, and his only hope of escape is the math scholarship that's going to take him to MIT in September, two years earlier than normal. CalTech had been going to make him wait another year, Rodney remembers, but he'd preferred MIT anyway, purely on the grounds that it was further away from his family. When he thinks of the summer of 1984, he remembers spending most of it holed up in his bedroom, reading and watching TV, counting down the days until he left for college.

The only thing he wanted was to get away, and now he's back again. Rodney's always known, deep down, that some higher power is out to get him. One of these days he's going to sit down and work out the mathematical proof of it, but until then, the fact that things like _this_ keep happening to him is ample empirical evidence to support the theory.

"This is ready," his mother says. "Fetch your sister."

"Where is she?"

"What, do I look like I have radar? You're supposed to be intelligent. Go and find her."

Rodney opens his mouth to bite out a reply. It should be easy; after all, the source of his natural flair for sarcasm, and the person he has to thank for training him so thoroughly in its use as an offensive weapon, is standing right in front of him. But somehow the words just won't come, and he's left there, standing in dumb silence, feeling resentful and belittled.

He walks out without saying anything.

Jeannie's not in her bedroom, and she's not in the living room or the den either. He's standing at the bottom of the stairs, wondering if she's playing in the yard, when he hears a sing-song, girlish monologue coming from the hall closet.

He pulls open the door. Jeannie is crouching inside, her toys arranged carefully around her. Her hair is tied up in bunches and the expression on her round little face when she looks up at him is one of undisguised loathing. "This is my house. We're having a party. You're not allowed in. Go 'way."

Rodney hunkers down in the door of the closet. "I wonder why I don't feel hurt by that. Oh, wait, I know: it's because your entire social circle consists of Beach Fun Barbie and a stuffed bear."

Jeannie grabs the bear—Mister Huggy, he remembers, and, God, he could have lived without ever dredging _that_ up from his memory—and squeezes it protectively against her chest. "Mister Huggy doesn't like you."

"Since Mister Huggy's a stuffed toy and you're going to grow up to marry a vegan English teacher, I'm not inclined to take the opinions of either of you very seriously." Then, less acerbically, he says, "Jeannie, please, just come and have lunch." He knows he's pleading with her; he knows, too, exactly how pathetic that is, but he can't face his mother without some kind of support, even if it's only from someone who thinks the Muppet Show is reality TV.

Grown-up Jeannie would understand, but the seven year old version of his sister just stares suspiciously at him, as if she suspects he's using some kind of complex ruse against her. After a couple of seconds she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt, and comes out of the closet, dragging Mister Huggy with her.

Back in the kitchen, his mother is ladling soup into three bowls. Rodney takes a seat at the table and helps himself to a couple of the sandwiches. As he starts eating he discovers he's a lot hungrier than he realized. In fact, he's ravenous. He finishes off the first sandwich in a couple of bites and then takes another. It must be his sixteen year old body's voracious appetite, because it can't be his mother's cooking, which is just as bad as he remembers it. She can't even make particularly good sandwiches: the bread's stale and the ham's dry, and they taste as appetizing as reheated MREs. On the other hand, Rodney's always quite liked military rations. Suddenly he begins to think this might be why.

"Leave some for your sister," his mother says as he reaches for a third.

"I'm hungry."

"And don't speak with your mouth full."

"I wasn't—" Rodney stops. It hits him, suddenly and with great force, that he's forty years old, holds multiple doctorates, has over one hundred highly qualified professionals reporting to him and can legitimately claim to have _saved the galaxy_ on at least three separate occasions. In short, he doesn't have to put up with this.

"Okay, you know what?" he says, standing up. "You can stop that right now. Maybe I used to put up with this kind of constant emotional abuse, but I'm significantly more mature and articulate now and it's time we got some things straight. I don't know why it is you feel the need to find fault with everything I say and do but it's going to _stop_ because I am—I'm going to be—a successful and talented adult, renowned for my intellect, celebrated for my achievements, and I am not this, this—_stupid kid_ you seem to think I am. I don't know what it is about me that made you decide you hated me from birth, but I never deserved it and it's not—it's _not fair._"

He stops there, because his traitor voice wavered up on the last few words, and they came out of his mouth in a kind of whiny bleat that even Rodney can't stand to listen to. As rants go, it's not vintage McKay; he might have all the advantages of his adult mind and experience, but there's something about being back here, in this house, at this table, which strips away all the layers of emotional armor he's built up around himself down the years and leaves him feeling exposed and defenseless. Inadequate.

His mother regards him coolly for several seconds. Then, without any emotion whatsoever, she says, "You have tomato soup on your chin, Meredith."

Too late, he remembers he never could get the last word with her.

"I'm going out," Rodney says, and gets up from the table.

Upstairs in his bedroom, where his mother can't see him, he wipes his chin.

  
***

He walks around the neighborhood for a while in a kind of daze, the past assaulting him afresh with every step he takes. There are things he remembers—the grocery store on the corner of Spalding Street where he used to buy Garbage Pail Kids trading cards—and things which he would have lived the rest of his life without ever thinking about again, like the mangy stray dog that used to scavenge around the dumpsters behind the Chinese restaurant. It growls at him as he passes by.

This used to be his entire world: five blocks wide and six long, encompassing his parents' house, the school, the park and the grocery store. He can't believe he ever managed to exist somewhere so restricted, so small, so _limiting_.

The only place he'd known that hadn't constricted him is where he's heading now.

The local library is just the way Rodney remembers it, and he remembers it perfectly—he should do, given the amount of time he used to spend here. He goes straight to the reference section and shrugs off his backpack as he sits down at the reading table. He opens the backpack and takes out a clean notepad and a pen.

He may be sixteen again, but he's still a genius. If anyone can figure out how this happened, it's him.

Fifteen minutes later, he's still staring at a blank piece of paper.

_Think logically_, he tells himself firmly. He picks up the pen and writes, at the top of the first page of the notebook:

_ POSSIBILITIES _

_(1) stress-induced mental breakdown (oh god)_   
_(2) hallucination / virtual environment (replicators?)_   
_(3) time travel (ancient tech?)_

If it's option one, then there's not much he can do about it, except wait for Keller to break out the good drugs for him. He doubts it, though: this is too internally consistent for a psychotic break. If it's option two, and Replicators have kidnapped him and trapped him in a version of 1984 inside his own head, then they're more inventively sadistic than he's previously given them credit for. But he doesn't think that's the most likely explanation, either, since nothing about this set-up seems designed to extract information about Atlantis from him.

That leaves option three: time travel.

Bizarre things happen in Atlantis—and to Rodney—with astonishing regularity, but there's usually some kind of clue as to the cause, even if it's just Sheppard saying 'Oh shit' at the exact moment a piece of formerly dormant Ancient technology lights up at his touch.

But nothing even a little bit strange has happened to Rodney for _weeks_. He thinks that could be some kind of record.

If he'd done something to send his adult consciousness hurtling back through time and across light years of space, then surely he'd _remember_ it, but when he searches his recent memory for clues, he comes up blank. Yesterday, he got up, worked, went to a couple of briefings, worked, yelled at a number of people for being morons, worked, ate dinner in front of his laptop, had hurried, fervid sex with Sheppard in one of the unoccupied rooms near the jumper bay, stayed up into the small hours fixing the long range scanners, and finally fell into a dreamless sleep the second his head made contact with his pillow.

It's true that until very recently, one of the things on that list would have counted as exceptionally unusual. One of the consequences of four-plus years in the Pegasus galaxy, Rodney has recently realized, is that it's made him a lot more ready to accept extraordinary situations as the norm. The fact in the last six months he and Sheppard have somehow become—what? Lovers? Fuck-buddies? Something he hasn't figured out the word for yet?—is pretty much the ultimate expression of the phenomenon.

The sex is always good, nearly always initiated by Sheppard, and never, ever discussed in between times. In all other respects, their relationship is exactly the same as it's always been: they have dumb arguments, make fun of each other, save each other's lives and, when required, everyone else's lives, too. It's just that now they do all that and sneak away afterward to find somewhere where John can gasp and curse and grind out Rodney's name over and over, and Rodney can shout when he comes without anyone hearing them.

It's a strange kind of normality, but then again, that's a phrase that pretty much sums up Rodney's entire life in Atlantis. And if the Arrangement he and Sheppard have (that's how he thinks of it, complete with a capital letter at the start: their _Arrangement_) is not everything Rodney would want, it is still enough that he's found himself unwilling to bring it to an end, or to say or do anything which might make John end it.

But as much as he likes thinking about sex with John Sheppard—and Rodney likes thinking about it a _lot_—he has to admit that it's highly unlikely to be the mechanism by which he fell asleep in an alien city in another galaxy and woke up in Vancouver in 1984.

"Hey, Meredith."

Rodney looks up, and nearly falls off his chair in surprise. "Oh sweet Jesus. Cheryl Blanchard?"

She giggles, which makes her blond hair bob around her eighteen year old face in a cute way, and her chest wobble in a really pretty great way. He hasn't thought about Cheryl Blanchard—the crush of his final year at high school—in two decades. Cheryl had been a glorious, unattainable ideal, occupying a level of the class's social hierarchy which Rodney, two years younger and about a thousand times smarter than everyone else, had been utterly excluded from. And then her parents had asked his parents if he could help her with her math two nights a week, and Rodney had spent the most erotic three months of his life up to that point sitting _right beside her_ on Tuesday and Thursday evenings as she struggled to comprehend the mysteries of differential equations. Occasionally he'd even managed to touch her wrist.

And now she's right there in front of him, wearing a tight sweater and that flowery perfume he never found out the name of and it's just—_overwhelming_. His cheeks flush hotly and he can feel himself starting to get hard. He pulls his chair in tightly against the reading table so she won't see and he tries, with limited success, to look casual.

"How, how are you?"

She nods. "I'm doing good. I got into UBC."

Rodney nods so hard he thinks his head is going to fall off. "That's great, that's really good. It's not one of the top universities, but it's certainly not among the worst, and the physics department isn't a complete loss, or at least it won't be in twenty years, I'm not sure what the quality of teaching is like there now and, anyway, it's really quality of research you need to look at when assessing these kinds of things and, ah, how would you like to go on a date?"

Cheryl smiles at him, and although it's not cruel, the pity Rodney sees there is almost harder to take. "I'm really grateful to you for the math lessons, Meredith. But, you and me? That's kind of silly, don't you think?"

And then Cheryl Blanchard turns around and walks out of Rodney's life again, eviscerating his hopes with elegant economy as she goes.

Really, he thinks as he watches her receding hips sway artfully from side to side, he should have been better prepared this time.

***

He stays in the library until Mrs. Flaherty, the crotchety chief librarian, throws him out, and then he spends a couple of hours just walking around, trying to think of anything he can do to avoid going home. But he's got no money to book himself into a hotel, and he can't think of anyone who'd take him in if he just turned up on the doorstep and asked to stay the night.

By the time he's trudging up the drive to the front door of his parents' house, it's after midnight and there are no lights on in any of the rooms. He can't decide whether to feel resentful that his mother wasn't concerned enough to wait up for him or relieved that she hasn't. On the whole, he's probably more relieved.

The spare key's exactly where it should be, under the large planter on the top step. Rodney lets himself in and creeps upstairs to his room, his feet avoiding the creaky floorboard at the top of the landing before his brain has consciously remembered it's there. He hates how easily he's readapting to this time and place; it's like a swamp, gradually sucking him down and down.

He lies down in his bed, but doesn't go to sleep.

After about an hour has passed, he hears a car pull up into the drive, and he hears another set of footsteps climb the stairs. The footsteps pass by the door to Rodney's room and go into his parents' bedroom, next door to his own.

A minute later, he hears his mother's voice say something, and his father's voice answer her. Their words are indistinct, but it doesn't matter that Rodney can't hear them; he knows what they're saying, knows how this goes.

His mother's voice says something else, her tone sharper, and his father's reply is short and curt.

Five minutes later, they're shouting at each other, loud enough for Rodney to make out everything they're saying, including the parts about him.

He puts his hands over his ears and, when that doesn't work, he mentally proves the Fibonacci recursion and all its generalizations. When _that_ doesn't work, he gives up and just lies there listening to his parents screaming vitriol at each other. He should be able to let this wash over him: it should be less painful, experienced through the filter of maturity, and he ought to be able to distance himself from it. But it's not and he can't. All he can do is hope with every fiber of his being that tomorrow he'll be back where and when he should be.

The next morning, he is woken by Tina Turner's voice coming from the tinny speakers of his radio alarm clock, demanding to know _What's Love Got To Do With It?_

Rodney thinks: _Not very fucking much._

  
***

  
Rodney doesn't remember if Wednesday, July 25, 1984 was a good day for him the first time he lived it, but on the second pass, it sucks.

He waits until after he's heard his father's car pulling out of the drive, then gets up and showers. He eats breakfast—a huge bowl of cereal and two slices of toast—and thinks about just going back to his room for the rest of the day, but after the previous night, he wants to get out of the house.

The only way he can get money from his mother is by offering to take Jeannie out, and so he ends up passing the morning at the swing-park. It's not a fun experience: she's clingy and tearful, and Rodney finds himself starting to revise his long-held belief that his sister was spared the worst of their parents' break-up by virtue of being too young to remember most of it. Maybe his Jeannie doesn't remember those years as well as he does, but she still lived through them, and the proof of that is right in front of him, fretful and bad-tempered and unwilling to communicate other than through Mister Huggy.

He takes her home for lunch—canned soup and sandwiches, again, eaten in oppressive silence—and collects his ten dollars from his mother before going out. He intends to go straight to the library, but he passes the cinema on the way and, on a whim, buys a ticket for the latest release, _Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. _It's not as good as _Raiders_, but Rodney doesn't care. He's never been so grateful for simple escapism.

He gets to the library at about four, and spends the rest of the day writing out in his notebook everything he knows about the physics of time travel, deriving the relevant equations from first principles where he has to. By the time the library's closing, his full notebook contains enough revolutionary material to win every major scientific prize there is, as well as several that don't exist yet. It's scant comfort to him.

The last thing he does before the library shuts is to add another possible explanation to the list on the first page of the notepad:

_(4) Have died and gone to hell._

  
***

He is lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating his situation with the same dull horror he's been feeling since he first woke up here, when his mother yells, "Meredith!" from the bottom of the stairs. He ignores her.

"Meredith!" she shouts, more loudly. "Come down here."

"No!" he yells back. He means it to sound defiant; unfortunately, in his not-long-broken sixteen year old voice, it just comes out petulant. He loathes this: he has the mind and memories of an adult, but he can't say anything in this body without sounding like the teenager he doesn't want to be.

There's a pause, and then he hears his mother's voice, talking to someone. He can't hear the words, but he recognizes the tone and he remembers how the script used to go: _Such a difficult boy, we don't know where he gets it from, how he ever expects to get on in the world—_

He doesn't hear the reply and he doesn't want to. He can't think of anyone who'd be likely to visit on a weekday afternoon, but he's confident that whoever it is, he doesn't want to be dragged downstairs and forced to make nice with them until they go. It can't be one of his friends because, well, he doesn't have any. He rolls over on to his stomach and pulls a pillow over his head.

Which is why he doesn't realize someone has come into his room until a voice which does not belong to his mother says, "I come all this way and you won't even say hello? Kind of rude, McKay."

The voice is higher and reedier than it should be, but the delivery—slow, deliberate, faintly amused—is the same and wonderfully, blessedly familiar. Rodney throws off the pillow, flips over and sits up in less than half a second, the movement far faster and more fluid than his forty year old body could have managed.

The kid leaning against the door of Rodney's bedroom, carrying a small backpack and wearing a red-and-white striped tee-shirt and jeans that are a little too big, is John Sheppard.

His hair is exactly the same, sticking up at all angles in a way that Rodney supposes he will now have to accept has more to do with genetics than styling products, and the basic shape of his face is virtually unchanged, although adolescent skinniness makes his features look slightly too big. The bare arms sticking out from the sleeves of his tee-shirt are covered with fair, downy hair, and are cord-thin, with no musculature at all; he looks like one strong gust of wind would blow him away. His skin is smooth, lacking even the hint of stubble, and there's a scattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks.

Sheppard has _freckles._ Rodney fights down the urge to laugh hysterically.

His silence must be unnerving Sheppard, because he's starting to look a little worried. "Uh, okay. You do know this is me, right? Because I have _no idea_ how I'm going to explain this to you if you don't."

"Of course I know you," Rodney says, his brain still working hard to assimilate the sheer weirdness of the visual input his eyes are sending it. Sheppard's about ten months younger than Rodney, so in the summer of 1984 he would have been—"Fifteen," Rodney says incredulously. "You're _fifteen_."

Sheppard glances down at himself and says, dryly, "Thanks for pointing that out, Rodney, I hadn't noticed." But he looks a lot more relieved than annoyed, and Rodney can't help but feel cheered by the knowledge that, as of this moment, he's not in this alone.

"I have never, ever been so happy to see you," Rodney tells him sincerely, "and I'm including that time in the Wraith hive, and the time I thought you'd been blown up by a nuclear bomb, and the _other_ time I thought you'd been blown up by a nuclear bomb, and the time on that planet where they wanted to sacrifice me to their gods—"

Sheppard holds up a hand, not even trying to hide his smile. "Okay, I get it. You're pleased to see me."

"I'm pleased to see you," Rodney agrees fervently. Then his unfettered joy subsides sufficiently for him to think that through properly. "Wait, wait. How did you get here?"

"Took the train," Sheppard says, sounding slightly smug.

"From where?"

Sheppard slides the backpack off his shoulder and sets it down at the end of Rodney's bed. "San Francisco. Well, first I hitchhiked to San Francisco, and then I took the train."

Rodney pictures this teenaged version of John strolling along the side of a highway, casually sticking out his thumb to attract the attention of every passing axe-murderer and child-molester, with neither the upper body strength nor the automated weaponry to defend himself. "You hitchhiked?" he asks, aghast. "You're _fifteen_."

"No, I'm thirty-nine, I just look fifteen." Sheppard rubs the back of his neck. The gesture, too adult for his appearance, looks strange, and Rodney wonders if his own body language is off, too. "You know, adolescence was really crappy for me the first time round. I'm not wild about doing it all over again."

"You have my complete agreement on that count, Colonel," Rodney says. It slips out automatically, and Rodney sees his own involuntary wince mirrored in Sheppard's expression.

"Better drop the rank, Rodney. It just makes us sound like we're playing soldiers."

"Right." Talking to Sheppard is making him feel weirdly off-balance, and Rodney suddenly realizes why: John's almost half a head shorter than he is, and he has to look down to make eye-contact. "Hey, I'm taller than you," he says. It really shouldn't please him as much as it does.

It doesn't please Sheppard at all. "I was a late developer," he says defensively.

"How'd you find me, anyway?" Rodney asks.

John picks up the Rubik's Cube sitting on the bedside table and starts to twist it idly. "I knew your father ran an engineering business. I went through the phone book until I found a firm with McKay in the name. Which, by the way, took forever without Google."

Rodney's about to ask John how he knows what his father did, and stops when he remembers it's because Rodney told him. It had been after the first Wraith attack, when they'd found that one of the bridges connecting two of Atlantis's towers had been damaged and was structurally unsound. Rodney had spent several days frantically trying to figure out a way to stabilize it before it collapsed and destroyed the building where the main science labs were located; he remembers complaining bitterly that if he'd wanted to be a civil engineer, he would have followed his father into the family business.

"Huh," he says. "You actually listen to me?"

"I'm wounded, Rodney. I always listen to you." John twists the Rubik's Cube several more times, completing the red face. Rodney can't stop looking at his hands: they are smaller than they should be, fine-fingered and lacking the dark hair that extends down from adult-John's wrists almost all the way to his knuckles. It's a weird thought, that those are the same hands—will be the same hands—that Rodney's grown used to feeling touching him, stroking him, making him come. He really can't stop staring at them.

"So I got the phone number, called the switchboard, and explained to the nice lady that I'd met Mr. McKay's son at camp and I'd promised I'd write to him but I'd lost his home address. She was very helpful."

Typical: Sheppard's barely hit adolescence and he's already got women falling over themselves to do things for him. "And then what? You just told your parents, _By the way, I'm going to Canada for a while, see you round?_"

Another flick of John's wrist, and the blue face is finished, too. "Not exactly."

Visions of headline news items and police forces mobilizing across the entire west coast of the U.S. float into Rodney's mind; maybe a shot of a worried-looking man and woman while a reporter voice-overs, _Fears are growing for the safety of missing teenager John Sheppard..._

"Oh, God. You ran away, didn't you?"

John twists the Rubik's Cube one final time and then returns it, completed, to the bedside table. "It's only running away if someone notices you're missing. My dad's in San Diego on business and my younger brother's staying with relatives in Chicago for the summer. Isabella's there, but she's used to me not being around much. It'll be a while before anyone realizes I'm gone."

Rodney wonders who Isabella is—John's cousin? His step-mother? A kindly aunt? But then, Sheppard's always been closed-lipped about his family and his upbringing: the very first time John ever mentioned his father to Rodney was to say he had to take a couple of days leave to go to his funeral.

John, clearly ready to change the subject, looks around and says, "So, this is your room?"

He surveys the bedroom with the same appraising gaze Rodney's seen him use immediately after stepping through the Gate to a new world. It's disconcerting, because it hits Rodney suddenly that there are a lot of things in his room that he's not sure he wants John to see. At sixteen his bedroom had been an uncomfortable mixture of the childish and the grown-up. On his shelves, Hardy Boys mysteries sit next to Frederik Pohl and Phillip K. Dick novels; the _Star Wars_ poster over the bed doesn't embarrass him—hell, he's watched _Star Wars_ with John more than once—but the fact that he has _Return of the Jedi_ bed-linen does. He feels uncomfortable, exposed.

Self-consciousness, as ever, makes him prickly. "It's my sixteen year old self's room, not mine," he says defensively. "Anyway, a lot of this stuff got cleared out before I went to college."

"Relax, McKay," John says, lifting down a model moon-lander from the end of one of the bookshelves. "I'm not judging you. Actually, it's kind of reassuring to find out you were a normal kid."

Rodney bridles. "What do you mean, normal?"

"Come on, you built an atomic bomb when you were in sixth grade."

"I built a _model _of an atomic bomb," Rodney corrects him, holding up a finger. "Although it's true that it was, potentially anyway, a working model. I still maintain that if I'd been able to source some weapons grade plutonium—" He breaks off, suddenly noticing the look on John's face. "What is it? What's the matter?"

John is staring at him intensely. "It's just—" He stops. "It's _you_. I mean, you look completely different, but you're still _you_." He takes a step closer. "My God, you're— Jesus, _look_ at you."

"All right, there's no need to rub it in," Rodney says, shifting uncomfortably on the spot and wishing he had the power to render himself invisible at will. "So I'm sixteen. No one looks their best in the hormone-addled throes of adolescence."

"No, no, that's not what I—" John shakes his head. "You look—_incredible_."

Rodney stares at him for a second, trying to decide if this an example of Sheppard's off-kilter sense of humor. But John wouldn't make a joke this cruel, and after a second of horrible uncertainty, Rodney realizes that he's completely serious.

"I, um. You really think so?"

"Christ, yes." John takes another step toward Rodney, so that there are barely a couple of inches between them. Then he lifts his hand and touches his fingers to Rodney's face, as if testing to make sure Rodney is real. It's an unexpected gesture—every time John has touched Rodney before, it's always been with a specific purpose: to help him up when he's fallen, to support him when he's injured, to make him hard when they have sex. This is the first time Rodney can think of when John has touched him just to _touch_ him.

Rodney feels John's fingers brush against his lips, tickling a little. "Your mouth's the same," John says, his own mouth quirking in a smile. "Figures."

"I've always thought it's my best feature," Rodney tells him. His breath puffs out against the palm of John's hand.

"I want to—" John starts. He hesitates. "I want to kiss you. Can I?"

That's the second surprise; in all their previous encounters, John has never asked permission to do anything. Rodney supposes that, tacitly if not explicitly, John sought his permission the first time he came to Rodney's quarters late at night and alone and Rodney gave it when he didn't turn him away.

"Yes," he says. "Yes." And then, just in case he hasn't been sufficiently clear, "Kiss me. Do that, yes."

John leans forward and then he suddenly lifts up a inch and Rodney realizes it's because he's had to stand on his toes to make up the height difference. Rodney ducks his head a little to make it easier, but John still holds back. When Rodney looks questioningly at him, he shakes his head, looking embarrassed. "I, uh—it's just a little weird. You're _sixteen_. I feel like I'm doing something I shouldn't."

Rodney raises a disparaging eyebrow at him. "What, are you worried you're going to corrupt me or something equally hideous? You're even younger than I am. If anyone's doing the corrupting here, it's me."

"I'll blame you for my sexual deviancy," John says. He tilts his head up and brings his mouth to meet Rodney's.

It does feel strange at first, but not because of Rodney's youth, or John's. It's the way John kisses him that feels different. The Arrangement has consisted almost entirely of rushed encounters and snatched moments, releases of tension after or very occasionally during crises. John's kisses have always been demanding, hasty precursors to the main business.

But this is not the same. John is tentative, holding back a little. It's like a first date kiss, Rodney thinks suddenly. The comparison makes him hanker suddenly for a relationship where John is his friend and his lover at the same time, instead of the strange back and forth see-sawing they have stumbled into.

Then, as John's confidence grows, the kiss deepens. Rodney puts his hand on the back of John's head, which has the dual advantage of prolonging their contact and letting him thread his fingers through John's hair. It feels amazingly soft, almost silky, and Rodney wonders if adult-Sheppard's hair would feel the same.

John, meanwhile, is hoisting up Rodney's tee-shirt, his fingers—slim and lacking the calluses that using a gun have put there—slipping under the cotton to explore skin which is firmer, smoother, tauter than it ever will be again. Rodney's skin is also, he would swear, more sensitive: it's like he can feel each and every nerve ending lighting up at John's touch, as if as well as the Ancient gene, John's got a gene for switching on something in Rodney, too.

Rodney can feel himself getting hard; the difference in their heights means that the bulge in his jeans rubs against John's flat, tight stomach. He feels John's erection as a press against the top of his thigh, urgent even through a couple of layers of clothing on either side.

Not such a late developer after all, then.

Making out, Rodney thinks: they're _making out_. It's not foreplay—foreplay is something you do once you reach an age where your body requires advance notice of intercourse. _Making out _is for adolescents, who have so much sexual energy that it spills over at the smallest provocation, like water sloshing out of a full bucket. Foreplay has technique, but _making out_ is fumbling and unskilled; although Rodney has the mind of a reasonably experienced adult, it can't keep up with his body's demands, and so he finds himself rendered clumsy again, breathless and uncoordinated, so completely overwhelmed that he can't decide where to put his hands next.

It must be the same for John. He breaks off the kiss and starts tugging at the belt of his jeans, then switches to working on the belt of Rodney's, like he really can't make up his mind who he wants to get naked first.

"Bad idea," Rodney says, his mouth up against John's ear.

"Prob'ly," John says indistinctly into Rodney's neck, but his hands keep working on Rodney's belt regardless.

"No, seriously, bad, _bad _idea," Rodney tells him, hearing the familiar, ominous tread mounting the stairs. "My mom's coming."

John hisses, "_Shit_," at the same moment that Rodney pushes him firmly away. It's really not fair, he thinks, that the best erection he's had in the last decade is going to go to waste.

By the time the bedroom door opens and Irene McKay comes in, Rodney is sitting next to John on the edge of the bed, several inches of empty space between them. Rodney has a large book open on his knees and John, backpack positioned nonchalantly across his lap, is doing a passable job of feigning interest in it.

"Well, you boys seem to be having fun," Irene says. "Who wants cookies?"

  
***

  
It's not that Rodney's never seen Sheppard using his charm to secure the co-operation of suspicious natives—he has, on dozens of occasions—it's just that he's never seen him use it on Rodney's _mother_. Rodney can't decide which is more disturbing, his mother's almost-pleasant demeanor, or John's frankly alarming butter-wouldn't-melt wholesomeness.

"Thanks, Mrs. McKay," he says brightly, taking another cookie from the plate she's holding out to him.

"Growing boys need their nourishment," Irene says. Rodney reaches for another cookie, too, but his mother whisks them away before he can take one. "Not you, Meredith."

"How come he gets more cookies and I don't?"

"Because you had lunch less than hour ago, but John's just made a long train journey all by himself."

Sheppard looks across the table at Rodney and nods in agreement. "All by myself."

Rodney scowls at him, but only because getting annoyed at John provides a momentary distraction from thinking about how much he wants to pin him to the floor and start up at exactly the point where they were forced to beak off in his bedroom. His dick, still a little hard from the episode upstairs, throbs approvingly at the idea, and he has to recite the periodic table to himself to subdue it. Once he's willed it into grudging submission, he forces himself to tune back into the conversation.

"Would you like to call your parents to tell them you've arrived safely?" Irene is asking John.

"No, that's okay," John says around a mouthful of cookie. "My dad's not there anyway."

"What about your mother?"

"She's not there either." Sheppard's using the same tone he employs on missions to shut down unwelcome enquiries about Atlantis's exact location or its defensive capabilities. Rodney's curious, but before he can say anything, though, the door to the back yard opens and his sister skips in, trailing Mister Huggy behind her.

John's eyebrows climb about a half-inch up his forehead. "My go—" he starts, and then, when Rodney kicks him, hastily amends it to, "—gosh. That's Jeannie? That's _Jeannie._"

"Well, I see Meredith's been telling you all about us." Irene smiles stiffly, and Rodney doesn't miss the look of annoyance that underlies her expression and which is meant just for him. "What a pity he didn't tell us more about you, John. Like the fact he'd asked you to visit."

While his mother's been speaking, Jeannie has hauled herself up on to one of the kitchen table chairs and has been staring at John like he's just arrived from outer space. Which in one sense, Rodney thinks, he actually kind of _has_.

"Mister Huggy says 'lo." Shyly, Jeannie holds the stuffed toy out across the table.

John looks at Rodney, who shrugs. "It's her appointed spokesperson. Spokesbear." He sighs. "Just go with it."

John reaches out and, gravely, shakes Mister Huggy's paw. "Pleased to meet you," he says, and Jeannie smiles, revealing the gaps where three of her milk teeth used to be.

"What are you boys going to do this afternoon?" Irene asks.

Staying in Rodney's room groping each other and ordering in pizza is the first and most appealing—although not the most productive—response that comes to mind. But Rodney doesn't get a chance to pitch it convincingly, because his mother already has something else planned for them.

"I know," she says, "you can go to the park and take Jeannie with you. How does that sound?"

  
***

  
"_Sounds great, Mrs. McKay_," Rodney mimics. He is sitting on a swing, idly pushing himself back and forth with his feet and, every once in a while, reaching out to give Jeannie a push when she starts to slow. At Jeannie's insistence, Mister Huggy has a swing to himself.

John, leaning against the metal frame, shrugs. "Come on, Rodney, she's your mother. Did you want me to be rude to her?"

"Actually? Yes. She was an evil, shriveled harridan who hated me and used every opportunity that arose to tell me as much. And she was sarcastic as hell with it."

"She didn't seem that bad to me."

"Please, you only spent ten minutes with her. I was sentenced at birth to sixteen and a half brutal years living under the same roof as that woman." Rodney exhales heavily. "Look, she was—nothing I ever did was ever good enough for her. Nothing. It didn't matter what I achieved, she was only interested in what I was going to do next. Even now, every time I succeed at something, I can't enjoy it without hearing her voice in my head saying—"

"Push! Mer, push!" Jeannie demands as her swing gently comes to a halt.

Rodney breaks off, suddenly grateful for the interruption. He'd meant to list his mother's flaws so Sheppard understood exactly how dreadful she'd been, and instead Rodney has an uncomfortable feeling that he's given away a little too much of himself in the process. He ignores the way John is looking at him—curious and not unsympathetic—and instead focuses his attention on Jeannie, giving his sister a shove to start her swinging again. "You have to use your bodyweight to give you momentum. Come on, Jeannie, this is one of the basic laws of motion. You're never going to get your doctorate if you don't learn this stuff early."

"Mister Huggy wants a push too."

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"I got it," John says, and nudges Mister Huggy's swing. Jeannie beams up at him, and John grins back. "Your sister's cute."

Rodney holds up a hand. "Ah, _no_. She's married. Or she will be."

John pulls a face. "Jesus, McKay, not _that_ kind of cute. How old is she, eight?"

"Seven, and don't forget it."

"I never realized there was such a big gap between you two."

"Jeannie was a late surprise baby." Rodney shrugs. "Officially, at least. It's probably a lot closer to the truth to say she was the save-the-marriage baby. It even kind of worked, for a few years." He leans back on the swing, which is meant for younger kids and is a little too small for his almost-but-not-quite-adult sixteen year old frame. "And don't think I don't know you're trying to avoid the subject. What the hell did you _do _to bring us here?"

John's expression is filled with the righteous indignation of the falsely accused. "What makes you think this is my fault?"

Rodney gives John his best _oh-please_ eyeroll, the one he usually reserves for particularly egregious mistakes by people on his staff who should know better. "Well, it wasn't anything I did, and you have an almost preternatural ability to attract trouble. Working out where to lay the blame is hardly the greatest test of my intellect. Now tell me what you did." When John still doesn't say anything, Rodney adds, "Remember I'm bigger than you now. Tell me or I'll give you a wedgie."

It's more likely the realization that Rodney's on to him than the threat of physical intimidation that makes John visibly deflate a little. "You know that memory machine we found a while back?"

Rodney frowns, not because he doesn't know what John's talking about, but because he doesn't immediately see its relevance to their current situation. The device had been one of several they'd found when they'd opened up a new sector on Atlantis's east pier. Initially, Rodney had thought it was another control chair, because it bore a close resemblance to the chair they knew about, but a cursory examination had shown it wasn't connected to the main network or any of the defense systems. That had been the first disappointment; the second had been that it didn't appear to do very much at all.

The first couple of gene users who'd sat in it couldn't get it to do anything, although the scans taken while they were trying to activate it indicated slightly elevated levels of activity in the regions of the brain associated with storage of long-term memories. Several more rounds of experiments later, they'd discovered that sitting in the chair made it easier to recall specific memories, and that the memories came back with a greater degree of clarity and immediacy than they did without the device's assistance. Rodney had tried it out himself, but without great success. He'd chosen to focus on the time he'd won the Heineman Prize for mathematical physics, but after ten or fifteen minutes' concentration, all he'd managed to do was remember the buffet that had been held after the presentation. He'd gotten up from the chair with the newly rediscovered knowledge that he'd eaten five cheese pastries and a dozen smoked salmon blinis, which was nice to know, but hardly worth the headache remembering had given him.

What he'd really wanted to find out, though, was what someone with a strong natural expression of the gene could get the machine to do. Usually Sheppard was first in line to try out Rodney's latest Ancient tech discoveries: sometimes Rodney thought their friendship had been sealed the day they arrived in the city, when he'd been the one who'd shown Sheppard the puddlejumpers for the first time, thus creating Pavlovian conditioning whereby John associated Rodney with _cool stuff _from that moment on. But the memory machine had been different: every time he'd wanted John to try it out, Sheppard had made excuses, until eventually Rodney had taken the hint and moved on to something else.

"I remember you didn't seem to be very interested in it. What changed your mind?"

"Well, I, uh... I've been kind of... thinking about...things," Sheppard says. "Lately."

He's not being very articulate, but he doesn't need to be. Rodney already knows what he's talking about. _Things_ means John's father and _lately_ means the month or so which has passed since he returned to Earth for the funeral.

"I couldn't sleep," John continues, "and, okay, you know how sometimes things sound like a good idea in your head at three in the morning? Well, I got to thinking about the memory machine, and I thought maybe if I used it, it might be easier to—work through some stuff."

Rodney stares at him. "You couldn't just get therapy like any normal person?"

"Believe me, I really wish I had," John says.

It's all starting to make sense, now. "So you went and used it. Except it's not a memory machine at all. It's a _time machine_. If the user only has a weak expression of the gene, all it does is stimulate long term memories. But with the full gene, it must somehow use the memory as a kind of _target_—a space-time destination to lock on to. And then it—I don't know, it must somehow project the user's consciousness back to that exact point, allowing them to inhabit their past self." Next to Rodney, Jeannie swings back and forth, singing a nonsense song to herself. "But that doesn't explain what I'm doing here. I was sound asleep while you were recklessly fooling around with advanced technology you didn't understand."

"Oh, and you _never_ do that."

"Hey, I'm not the one who somehow managed to drag us both back to 1984, a year which marked the nadir of my adolescence."

"It wasn't exactly a golden year for me either," John says angrily.

Rodney opens his mouth to ask him if that's the case, why the hell he was thinking about it in the first place, but he doesn't get a chance, because right then Jeannie puts her hands over her ears and makes a whimpering sound. "Don't _fight_." She glowers at Rodney. "You fight with everybody, just like Mommy."

Rodney blinks, taken aback at the comparison, and it's John who pats Jeannie reassuringly on the arm. "It's okay, we're not fighting. This is just—how we talk to each other sometimes." With Jeannie placated, he looks over the top of her head at Rodney and says, more evenly, "Look, I don't want to be here, you don't want to be here. Any bright ideas for getting us back?"

"Lots," Rodney says. "Unfortunately, they all involve me being at approximately the same point on the space-time continuum as the thing that sent us here and not, you know, two and a half decades and an _entire galaxy _away."

"Wonderful," John mutters. "Okay, you think it's just our minds which have traveled in time, right?"

Rodney nods. "Transporting matter over such a huge distance in time and space like this takes vast amounts of energy, and if the device we found had had several ZPMs plugged into it, I think I might have noticed. Projecting a consciousness back in time is more energy efficient by several magnitudes. It's time travel on a budget, and if I hadn't been _turned into a teenager_ I'd take a moment to be impressed."

"So our bodies—our adult bodies—are probably lying unconscious in the infirmary in the future," John says. "Which means that Carter and Zelenka and half the science division are trying to figure out how to wake us up. All we have to do is sit tight until they do." He stops. "Do we need to worry about changing history? I don't want to get back and find we've accidentally wiped out all of humanity."

Witheringly, Rodney tells him, "Well, yes, we _would_ have to worry about that, if we'd been transported into the plot of _Twelve Monkeys. _Luckily for us, we haven't been."

"Haven't we already altered our own pasts just by meeting like this?" John asks. "That's got to change things."

Rodney shakes his head. "Not necessarily. You and I aren't the result of this timeline." When Sheppard looks unconvinced, he goes on, "Look, I'll prove it. How did we meet for the first time?"

The answer comes immediately: "In Antarctica, when I activated the control chair."

"Right. Our memories haven't altered, in spite of the fact that we're here talking to each other as teenagers in 1984. That implies that our own personal histories aren't being re-written, which in turn implies that the future we came from and this version of the past are somehow independent of each other. Which in turn implies that it doesn't matter what we do while we're here, nothing about the future we've come from will change. _Quod erat demonstratum._"

"So at least Atlantis is still gonna be there when we get back," John says, sounding relieved. "Good to know."

"What's 'Lantis?" Jeannie asks innocently.

"Uh, nothing," Rodney says, suddenly remembering that his sister is, in fact, quite intelligent, and that in light of that, he and John should probably have been a little more careful talking in her presence. "It's nothing important, and it's definitely nothing you need to tell Mom and Dad about, understood?"

She looks at him, expression calculating. "I want ice cream."

"Damn, she's good," John says admiringly.

"All right, fine, we'll get ice cream on the way back," Rodney says. He offers Jeannie his hand and they set off back through the neighborhood, taking a diversion to stop by the local ice cream parlor. By the time he's bought Jeannie's silence with two scoops of chocolate ice cream with sprinkles on top, he's starting to feel a little more sanguine. Sheppard's right: it's only a matter of time until someone back on Atlantis works out how to return them home. Until then, all he has to do is survive his family, which will be easier now that John's presence as a guest in the house will force his parents to be superficially civil to each other. This is okay; this is feasible. He's been to another galaxy, after all; he can cope with being sixteen again for a few days.

When they get back to his parents' house, there is car Rodney doesn't recognize parked outside.

"Expecting visitors?" John asks warily.

"No," Rodney answers. Now that they're closer, he can see it's a rental car: there's a sticker inside the front windshield.

Then the front door opens and Rodney's mother walks out, followed by a man wearing a suit who Rodney doesn't recognize. Except that's not completely true, because even though he doesn't recognize him, he's still oddly familiar—something about his bearing, or maybe the line of his jaw—

He turns to John. "Is that your—"

He doesn't get to finish the question, but he doesn't need to, because the appalled look on John's face gives him his answer. "Let's get out of here," John says.

But it's too late; they've been spotted. The next thing Rodney hears is his mother's sharp voice calling, "Meredith Rodney McKay!" at the exact same time as John's father yells, "John Henry Sheppard!"

Jeannie blithely crunches the last of her ice cream cone. Rodney looks at John. "We are so screwed."

  
**PART 2**

  
Of all the surreal things which have happened to Rodney—and, at this point, he could comfortably fill several volumes—possibly the weirdest to date is being sixteen years old again, sitting in the lounge of his parents' house, listening to his mother and John's father apologize to each other for their sons' shortcomings.

"—Always been headstrong, but this is first time he's done anything like this," Patrick Sheppard is saying. He casts a disapproving look in his son's direction. "I'm very disappointed in him."

John, slumped on the couch next to Rodney, says nothing. His arms are folded across his chest and he's staring straight ahead. Right now, if Rodney didn't know better, he'd have a hard time believing he was anything other than the fifteen year old kid he looks like.

"You must have been frantic with worry," Irene McKay replies. "I would have thought Meredith would have had more sense than to go along with this, but apparently he doesn't." She sighs. "He can be immature for his age."

"I am actually _in the room_," Rodney says curtly.

"Please don't interrupt when the adults are talking, dear."

With as much dignity as he can muster, Rodney says, "I am not a child. College this Fall, remember?"

John's father looks inquiringly at Rodney's mother, who nods. "Meredith has been accepted by MIT," she says. "They're taking him two years early. They said they'd never seen test results like his before."

There's a note of satisfaction in her voice, but it doesn't give Rodney any pleasure to hear it. It was always like this, he remembers: the only time his mother ever showed any pride in his achievements was in relating them to other people, when she could use his accomplishments to reflect well on herself.

"You must be very proud," Patrick Sheppard says, and gives his son another loaded look. "See what some people achieve when they apply themselves, John?"

John doesn't answer. His face is almost expressionless. This worries Rodney, because the only times he's ever seen Sheppard this outwardly calm have been right before he's done something insane, reckless, violent, and sometimes all three at once.

Turning back to Rodney's mother, Patrick Sheppard says, "We've had a tough year. My wife... my wife is ill. It's been especially hard for John. But that's no excuse for these kinds of antics." Patrick sets down his coffee cup in a stiff gesture and stands up. To John, he says, "I think you've imposed on the McKays' hospitality for too long already. Let's go."

It hits Rodney then that John's father is _taking him away_, and that as soon as they walk out the door Rodney is going to be alone with his family again. He looks at John and sees, with relief, that the unnatural calmness has gone, replaced with an alarm that reflects Rodney's own. They have to do something, but for a bleak, horrible moment, Rodney can't think _what_.

Then John says, "He's helping me with math."

"Really," Patrick says, his tone implying he finds that less than completely credible.

Rodney nods vigorously. "I used to—uh, I give lessons to the kids at school a lot." This is mostly true, although Rodney only ever tutored to earn money to feed his Marvel habit or, in Cheryl Blanchard's case, out of hormone-induced lust.

"Mr. Levy said he'd keep me back a grade if I don't pass math next year," John says to his father, which makes Rodney forget their subterfuge for a second and just stare at him in surprise because, wow, he wasn't expecting _that_.

"I didn't think you'd taken what your teachers said so much to heart."

"I figured I'd find out what I could _achieve _if I _applied _myself," John says pointedly.

From the look on John's father's face, he's not convinced, but is willing to go along for now. To John, he says, "Since the McKays have been gracious enough to make you welcome here, it's only right we should do something to make up to them for the inconvenience." Then he turns to Irene. "Would Meredith like to come and stay with us for a few days?"

She draws in a breath. "Well, that's generous of you, but I'm sure it would be an imposition—"

"Not at all," Patrick replies. "We have plenty of room."

Irene still looks reluctant. "Meredith has a very delicate constitution. Traveling long distances doesn't agree with him."

Rodney exchanges a glance with John, and then realizes what he's going to have to do. He shuts his eyes for a moment, and thinks of all the things that would be preferable to this. The long list includes an all-day combat training session with Ronon and carrying out project evaluations for every single person in the science division. Twice.

Then he opens his eyes, grits his teeth and draws on whatever deeply-hidden reserves of well-mannered politeness that his Canadian heritage grants him. "Mom, please, can I?"

His mother purses her lips, then gives a small nod. "Well, if you're sure you want to, I suppose."

Rodney breathes out in heartfelt relief, but his ordeal isn't over yet.

"Meredith! Where are your manners? Say thank you to Mr. Sheppard."

Rodney turns to John's father. If his tone isn't completely diffident and respectful, it's still closer to both qualities than he's managed in maybe fifteen years. "Thank you, Mr. Sheppard."

Patrick smiles and Irene nods a terse approval. John looks just as relieved as Rodney feels, and also faintly stunned.

"See?" Irene says. "It's not so hard to be nice, is it?"

And if that isn't taking one for the team, Rodney doesn't know what is.

  
***

  
After that, it's only a matter of sitting through a final round of _once-again-say-how-sorry-I-am-Mrs-McKay_ and _no-need-to-apologize-Mr-Sheppard _and a lecture from Irene on the proper care and feeding of her son—which she barely gets to start before John interrupts with a concise, "Citrus, blood sugar, regular naps, yeah, I know the drill,"—and the next thing Rodney knows, he's sitting in the departure lounge of Vancouver airport, waiting for the flight to San Francisco to be called.

John is sitting between Rodney and his father, slumped in the plastic airport lounge chair, looking sullen. Patrick's expression is grim, too, and Rodney figures that the only thing that's prevented a full-blown shouting match so far is his presence. The Sheppard men, apparently, prefer to fight in private.

His suspicions are confirmed when Patrick takes a couple of bills out of his wallet and suggests that Rodney might like to go and get sodas for himself and John. Rodney gives John one of the looks which they've developed over the course of four years of dangerous missions to alien planets: this one roughly translates as, _If I leave you alone for two minutes, will you still be alive when I get back? _The response from John is a small nod which means, _Yes, I'll be fine. _Then again, it might mean, _Go, run, save yourself while you can. _

Maybe they don't have this whole silent communication thing down as well as Rodney thought they had.

He takes the money from Patrick and remembers to say thank-you—he'd forgotten the ignominy of being entirely financially dependent on adults—and heads off to find out where people bought refreshments before Starbucks. The answer turns out to be a small, unbranded kiosk. Rodney gets himself a coffee, but when he takes his first mouthful he nearly has to spit it out: it's much too bitter, undrinkable. He's about to take it back and complain when he realizes the problem isn't with the coffee but with his undeveloped sixteen year old sense of taste. Not liking coffee is such a novelty that he has to take another couple of sips just to convince himself he really doesn't want it. Finally he admits to himself that what he's really craving is something sugary, and he goes back and buys two Coca-Colas.

When he gets back to where he left John and his father, Rodney slows his pace to a crawl, and then stops completely. They're arguing heatedly, and neither has noticed his return. Rodney's usual response to this kind of tricky, emotionally complex situation would be to ignore it completely and barge right on in—he decided long ago that if he was going to be that bad at negotiating the subtler aspects of human interaction he might as well not waste any time in the attempt—but something holds him back. It's like the flip side of how it felt to have John looking around his bedroom: now it's Rodney's turn to be the uninvited spectator at someone else's past. Unsure what to do, he ends up hovering near them, out of sight but not earshot, feeling as awkward and self-conscious as he must look.

"What in God's name were you thinking?" Patrick is saying. "Did you think no one would worry? Isabella was _crying _when she called to tell me you were gone. How do you think I felt, being called out of a board meeting to be told that the housekeeper is on the phone in tears because my son is missing?"

"I didn't mean to upset Isabella," John says. "I didn't think—"

"No, you didn't," Patrick interrupts. "My God, John, I run a _phone_ company. How hard do you think it is for me to get my own records pulled? Did you really think I wouldn't be able to figure out that if you called an engineering firm in Vancouver and then immediately ran off, the two things might just be connected? This may come as a surprise to you, but I didn't get where I am without possessing a little intelligence." He's silent for a second, and then, his voice softer, he goes on, "John—son—I know things aren't easy right now. It isn't easy for me, either—"

"I don't know about that," John says, his voice biting. Rodney has only rarely heard him this manifestly angry, and he wonders if it's something to do with being a teenager again, or fighting with his father, or maybe the combined effect of both. "You didn't have a lot of trouble leaving us to go to San Diego."

"We've talked about this before," Patrick says. He sounds suddenly tired. "I have a lot of responsibilities. Things I can't just walk away from. You'll understand when you're older."

John gives a snort of derision. "Believe me, I understand pretty well right now. You sent Dave away. You wanted to send me away, too."

"We didn't send your brother away, John." Rodney can hear the clipped frustration in Patrick's voice. "Louise offered to take him for the summer and your mother and I—both of us—decided that would be best. You could have gone too, if you'd wanted."

Stubbornly, John says, "No. We're a family. We should stay together; it's your job to make sure we do. We're your responsibility."

Patrick sighs. "It's not that simple."

"Yes, it is."

And that, Rodney knows, isn't just adolescent idealism talking. With Sheppard, family comes first, although his definition of _family _is wider and more inclusive than most people's.

"Don't presume to lecture me on family responsibilities, John," Patrick says sharply. "Did you stop to consider what hearing about this little stunt of yours would do to your mother?"

"You told Mom?" John says, his teenage voice shifting up a pitch in anger. "You shouldn't have told her. She doesn't need to worry about me. I can look after myself."

"I'd say this episode is ample proof otherwise," Patrick says. Then, after a tiny pause, he adds, "All your mother knows is that you were visiting a friend and I went to collect you. I had to tell her something to explain why neither of us was going to be there to welcome her home from the hospital."

John is silent for several long seconds. "She's—home," he says finally. "She came home..."

"She was discharged her this morning. She'll be at home when we get back. You can see her then."

If John replies, it's lost under the blare of the airport announcement system calling their flight.

The remainder of the journey is scarcely less strained. John barely says twenty words to his father between take-off and landing, and they're all _yes _and _no_. It falls to Rodney, therefore, to hold up the conversation. He would have relished this at sixteen, when he'd found it a lot easier to talk to adults than kids his own age, but from his forty year old perspective John's father's polite inquiries are just condescending. He manages to keep his responses civil until Patrick asks, "So, have you thought about what you'd like to be when you grow up?" at which point Rodney thinks, _to hell with it, _and replies, "I'm going to be a genius astrophysicist and intergalactic space explorer."

John snickers, and Patrick doesn't try to talk to Rodney after that.

He and John don't get a chance to speak privately until Patrick stops for gas—$1.21 a gallon—on the drive from the San Francisco airport to the Sheppard family's home. Once they're alone in the car, John waves a hand vaguely and says, "I'm sorry about, you know..."

"It's all right," Rodney reassures him. "You met my dreadful family. It's only fair I get to meet yours."

"Your family wasn't so bad. I was hitting it off pretty well with Mister Huggy."

After a couple of seconds have passed, Rodney says, "So, are you, you know... okay?"

"I'm fine," John says shortly.

Rodney perseveres. "Because it must be weird, talking to your dad when it's only been a month since—"

"I'm _fine_, McKay." John is using—or trying to use—the same tone he employs for giving orders in the field, but he can't quite pull it off with his wavering fifteen year old voice. Maybe that's why Rodney decides to ignore the strongly implied _drop it_.

"It's just that—"

"Rodney," John interrupts. He's sitting in the car's front seat, and he twists around so he's looking at Rodney, in the back. "None of this is real, okay? All of this happened a long time ago and it's over now. You said it yourself: it doesn't matter what we do here, we can't change anything." He turns around so he's facing forward again, and Rodney can no longer see his face. "I already dealt with this stuff. I don't need to deal with it again."

But the way he says it, Rodney's not sure whether that's an assertion or a denial.

  
***

  
Shortly after John and Ronon had returned from Earth and John's father's funeral, Rodney had asked Ronon what Sheppard's family home was like. Ronon had thought hard for a few seconds before replying, "Big. Impressive." But Rodney had figured that after spending seven years living rough, Ronon probably found anything with a roof impressive, and so Rodney hadn't placed a lot of weight on his opinion.

Now, as the car drives up the seemingly unending tree-lined avenue that leads to the Sheppards' mansion-like home, Rodney is forced to admit that he probably should have taken Ronon at his word.

For a start, it isn't so much a house as an estate. It's dark when they finally arrive, but a multitude of tastefully angled exterior lights show the property off to its best advantage. The main residence is so large that it could comfortably swallow Rodney's parents' house several times over; behind it, the corner of a swimming pool is just visible, lit from beneath so that its surface ripples and glints invitingly, and beyond that Rodney can see floodlit tennis courts and stables and the outline of something that could be a guest cottage. John hops out of the car easily, not even really looking around, and it suddenly hits Rodney, a truth he's known intellectually but didn't really _know _until now, that Sheppard grew up accustomed to the kind of wealth that Rodney's father worked seventy hour weeks in pursuit of without ever coming close to emulating. Rodney's never been motivated by money—intellectual achievement has always been his measure of success—but all the same he can't help feeling a twinge of envy. John never had to overhear his parents arguing about money, never had to suffer long lectures about the sacrifices being made on his behalf, never sat down to Friday night dinner comprised of the week's leftovers.

But Rodney can't make his jealousy stick, because no matter how hard he tries to imagine it, he can't make the John Sheppard he knows fit in here. John isn't interested in possessions for their own sake; it's what things do, what he can make them do, that fascinates him. He wants to fly jumpers, not own them; even the few personal possessions he has back on Atlantis—his guitar and surfboard—are functional objects. Maybe it's a by-product of having the gene; perhaps Sheppard is hard-wired to want to turn things on, make them work, find out what they're _for_. That natural inquisitiveness, more in character for a scientist than a soldier, was one of the first things Rodney actively liked about him. Now, as they go into the house, and Rodney finds himself surrounded by art on the walls and expensive, purely decorative furniture, he finds himself seeing it the way John might—all these things with no purpose or function, stifling clutter, costly junk. _Stuff._

They are met in the hall by a middle-aged, matronly woman wearing a white apron over a blue uniform smock—Isabella the crying housekeeper, Rodney figures. She welcomes the prodigal older Sheppard son home with a huge hug; John wriggles but can't escape her stout arms, and his expression changes to one of deep embarrassment when she kisses him on the forehead. Rodney thinks he'd give just about anything right now for a camera.

"Why do you make me worry about you?" Isabella demands, ruffling John's hair. John mumbles something in reply, although it's mostly muffled by Isabella's embrace. "You think you're so big and tough, but you're not."

Rodney can't resist a smirk. "Yeah, I'd go more with small and puny." John, who has finally managed to extricate himself, glares at him.

"This is John's friend, Meredith," Patrick says for Isabella's benefit.

"Uh, Rodney. I prefer Rodney." Patrick makes a tiny motion of acknowledgment which is not quite a shrug. It's the gesture of an adult indulging a child's whim, and Rodney tries hard—really, he does—not to take offense.

"Rodney will be staying with us for a few days," Patrick says, with only the smallest emphasis on the name. "He can have the large guest room, Isabella. Now, since it's been a long day and some of us have to get up for work tomorrow morning, I'm going to bed." Patrick pauses on the first step of the wide marble staircase. "Your mother's probably asleep, John, but if you want to go up and see her—"

"I don't want to disturb her," John says. "I'll see her tomorrow."

And that's perfectly reasonable—sensible, even—but there's still something off about John's response. It's that unnatural calmness again, the unshakeable composure that Rodney never finds as reassuring as he knows he's supposed to.

Patrick, however, seems to take it at face value. "That's very thoughtful of you." He starts to go up the stairs. "Good night, boys."

Then they're standing in the hall with Isabella, who says the most welcome sentence anyone's spoken to Rodney since they left his parents' house: "Who wants something to eat?"

  
***

Isabella, it turns out, is a much better cook than Irene McKay—at least, if her sandwiches are anything to go by. Rodney's about to start into his fourth when he thinks, regretfully, that he should probably lay off now if he doesn't want to be up all night with indigestion. Then he remembers that at sixteen he _never _got indigestion, and happily starts eating again.

When the sandwiches are all gone, Atlantis's Head of Science and the expedition's military commander drink mugs of hot cocoa with whipped cream and mini-marshmallows sprinkled on top. Rodney would swear John's the first one to yawn, but whoever starts it, a minute later neither of them can stop. Isabella clears away their mugs and escorts them upstairs, where she tells Rodney to wait in John's room while she makes up his bed. He should probably offer to help, but Rodney's always had a weakness for letting other people do things for him and, besides, this is the good part to being a teenage boy again—he's not expected to be competent at anything even slightly domestic.

Also, he figures he's owed a look at fifteen year old John's bedroom.

He's not disappointed.

"Seriously," he says as soon as he stops laughing for long enough to speak, "helicopter wallpaper?"

Sheppard scowls. "People who rest their dainty heads on Luke Skywalker pillowcases shouldn't throw stones."

Rodney relaxes further when he looks around and sees that John's room is, if anything, even more juvenile than his own. There are at least a couple of dozen model airplanes and helicopters on display, suspended from the ceiling in an approximation of flight or sitting on top of the bookcase as if about to take off. The bookcase shelves are stacked with more sports paraphernalia than books, but there's a pile of comics in a corner that Rodney makes a mental note to investigate later. It's fascinating, and while Rodney can tell that John's just as uncomfortable as Rodney was when their positions were reversed, he can't help staring. It's like studying the archeology of John Sheppard, excavating layers of the man to dig down to the foundations buried underneath.

He wanders over to a desk where a vaguely familiar looking console is hooked up to a bulky television. "My God, what is this, an Atari? I _begged _my parents to get me one of these. Hey, have you got Pac-Man for it?"

"Somewhere," John says, surveying the general mess.

"Because if you do, we totally have to play that." Rodney wanders over to the bed and sits down next to John. This proves to be a mistake, because when the mattress dips under his weight it makes his thigh press against John's, and that's enough to make his sixteen year old dick start to get hard again. Manfully _(ha)_, he resists the urge to grope John; instead, he gives a small groan, less out of uncontrollable desire than the inconvenience of it, because he's tired and if he were the age he's supposed to be, right now he'd have no problem collapsing into bed and crashing out. He looks down at the swelling in his jeans and sighs, "Not again."

"Yeah, I, uh," John says. He shifts a little, making the bulge in his own pants stand out more clearly. He's actually blushing, which Rodney should not find as hot as he does.

"Do you think we have time to, ah..."

"Probably not," John says. He glances at the door. "Isabella doesn't always knock."

"Crap," Rodney says. "Now I know why teenagers are so sexually frustrated—we don't get left alone long enough to do any serious fooling around."

"We?" John raises an eyebrow.

"Freudian slip," Rodney says. "It's hard to remember I'm actually forty when my hormones keep insisting otherwise."

"Adult minds, adolescent bodies," John says. He frowns and looks, Rodney thinks, uncertain. It's not an emotion he associates with Sheppard; then again, maybe it's just that John's better at hiding it under his adult face. He looks at Rodney and says, hesitantly, "I feel like I'm—thinking differently. Talking to my dad, being back here, I feel like—" He breaks off.

"Like a kid again," Rodney supplies.

"Yeah," John says. "I don't like it," he adds, sounding exactly like a teenager.

"I'm not exactly enthused about this either," Rodney says, "but we're stuck with it until someone figures out how to bring us back—and, let me tell you, certain people on my staff will find their slowness to solve this brought up at their next appraisal. In the meantime, there are certain advantages. Try to think of this as a vacation—lots of food and sleep and no one trying to kill us in unexpected and interesting ways."

"I guess," John says, looking unconvinced. Rodney has that same weird, off-balance feeling he had when Sheppard first showed up back at his parents' house. This conversation isn't following the normal script: every other time they've ever gotten into some strange predicament, it's always been Sheppard reassuring _him_. But Rodney is finding it a lot easier to be relaxed about their latest misadventure now that he's several hundred miles away from his mother, while John appears to be far less well equipped to deal with his own family than with anything they've ever come up against in the Pegasus Galaxy.

"And maybe there'll even be sex, in the unlikely event we get ten uninterrupted minutes," Rodney says.

That has the intended effect of making John smile. "So, just like Atlantis, really."

Rodney smiles, too, although the emotion behind it is mostly relief. Until now, the Arrangement has been something they've done, not something they've talked about, and he's pretty sure this is the first time they've discussed it in a normal conversation. If a conversation they're having in 1984 while inhabiting the bodies of their teenage selves can in any sense be described as normal.

"Hey, look," Rodney goes on, instilled with new confidence, "maybe this is a good time for you to be here, if your mom's getting better."

Immediately, Rodney knows he's said something wrong. John's whole body goes rigid, one hand balling into a fist at his side. When he speaks, he doesn't turn his head to look at Rodney, and his voice is so quiet that Rodney has to strain a little to make him out.

"The hospital didn't send her home because she's getting better, Rodney. They sent her home because they can't do anything else for her."

  
***

The next morning Rodney wakes up hard, which is possibly the least surprising thing to have happened to him recently.

Fortunately, the guest bedroom has its own bathroom, and he has a long, luxurious shower, which is even more pleasurable for the knowledge that his mother is not going to interrupt him to tell him not to use all the hot water.

The water streams down over his shoulders and back in hot rivulets and he takes a moment, as he applies soap, to look at himself. He remembers, at sixteen, hating his body, skipping gym class in favor of the library and refusing to go to swimming lessons. Now, though, he doesn't know what he was so embarrassed about. His skin is pale, sure, but it's taut across his stomach, and his chest, although mostly hairless, actually has some definition, thanks to the muscle mass that his constant appetite is helping to build. He regrets, now, that he wasn't able to let himself enjoy being sixteen when he really was this age.

So when he takes his cock in his hand, it's with more anticipation than he's felt in quite a long time. He strokes himself firmly from base to head, and is rewarded by spasms of pleasure, like small electric shocks in his nerve endings.

He strokes himself again, and lets his mind replay the highlights of the previous day. He thinks about fifteen year old John, thinks about how his smooth, stubble-free skin felt rubbing against Rodney's cheek, thinks about his supple hands on Rodney's body.

It feels good, and he knows he could get off on this, but somehow it's not as satisfying as it should be. And as soon as he's had the realization, the picture in his head blurs and changes, so that it's the older version of John who's touching him, his stubbly jaw scratchy against Rodney's face, his hands rough and callused on Rodney's skin. It's this body which is John Sheppard to Rodney; during the months since the Arrangement began he has learned to navigate its contours using scars like landmarks.

In Rodney's head, the image of John leans forward, touches his fingers to Rodney's lips and whispers, _You look incredible, Jesus, I want to, can I—_

That does it. He tries to hold back a little longer, but it's just not possible; one more stroke and he comes so violently that he gasps and nearly slips on the wet tiles. Then he stands under the hot water for several long minutes, feeling each separate jet of water pounding his still-sensitive skin, listening to the blood thrumming in his ears.

  
***

The day just keeps getting better: Isabella has made pancakes for breakfast.

John's already at the table, working his way through more food than Rodney's ever seen him eat in one sitting before. It's reassuring to know he's not the only one affected by the adolescent appetite thing. Rodney sits down opposite him and snags himself a generous helping of pancakes before John can finish them all.

At the other side of the kitchen, Isabella is assembling a third breakfast on a tray: a bowl of fresh fruit, triangles of hot buttered toast and a glass of orange juice. A mound of fluffy yellow scrambled eggs heaped next to the toast completes the offering, and then Isabella lifts the tray and starts to go to the door. She pauses at the threshold and looks over her shoulder at John.

"Your mother says she slept well last night. She's feeling a little better today."

John nods, but he doesn't look up. He lifts another huge forkful of pancakes, intent on eating in a way Rodney knows is fake—no matter what his teenage appetite is like, Sheppard just isn't that interested in food.

Isabella persists, "Maybe you'd like to bring her breakfast to her."

"Can't," John says. "We're going out." His fork scrapes against his plate, leaving Rodney slightly awed by the sheer speed with which he managed to clear it. Rodney redoubles his attack on his own pancakes, but John has already gulped back the last of his juice and is getting up from the table with the kind of abruptness that reminds Rodney of the way he runs for the Gate Room when a citywide alert is called.

Isabella pushes her lips into a thin, disapproving line, but she doesn't pursue it. Instead she says, "Dinner will be at half past seven. Don't be late. Your father is coming home early specially."

John mutters something under his breath about feeling honored, but if Isabella hears, she doesn't make an issue of that, either. As soon as she's gone, John taps the table next to Rodney's plate. "Finish up. We're moving out."

It's time, Rodney decides, to put his foot down. Firmly, he says, "No, I think not. We're not going anywhere until I've had my breakfast. And, anyway, what's with this 'moving out' business? This isn't a mission. We don't have to get back through the Gate for a debriefing. No one expects us to be anywhere." He stops, struck by what he's just said: today there are no meetings he has to be at, no petty interdepartmental disputes he'll have to waste time resolving, no dull administrivia to suck the productivity out of his day. Today, he is sixteen again, old enough to have a little independence, young enough not to have accumulated any adult responsibilities. It feels... good.

"I'm not hanging around here all day," John says, as if 'here' isn't a luxurious estate complete with swimming pool, tennis courts and bowling alley. Granted, Rodney hasn't actually seen any evidence of a bowling alley, but he wouldn't be surprised if there was one.

"And how far do you think you're going to get?" Rodney asks. "Because I am not letting you hitchhike again, I do more than enough walking when we go off world, and borrowing your dad's car isn't exactly an option."

John grins, and it's the sly, _just-had-an-idea_ grin that always makes Rodney's heart sink a little, because he rarely likes what comes next.

"You can ride a bicycle, right, McKay?"

Correction: he _never_ likes what comes next.

  
***

Much to Rodney's regret, one of the bikes John makes him try is about the right size for him. He considers pretending he doesn't know how to ride, but quickly rejects that idea, partly because he doesn't want to appear even lamer than he actually is, and partly because Sheppard would just insist on trying to teach him.

When he first gets on, for a second he thinks maybe he'll be the first person to disprove the old adage about never forgetting how to ride a bike, and wouldn't that be just his luck. But, no. He wobbles for the first fifteen or twenty yards, and then something in his brain clicks and suddenly his feet are sure on the pedals, his grip on the handlebar firm. He feels a surge of exhilaration, just the same way he does whenever he masters any kind of technology, and he can't help grinning exultantly.

"See? This is fun," John says, mounting his own bike with ease and pedaling to catch up with him.

Rodney tries to smother his grin and doesn't—quite—manage it. He settles for declaring airily, "I am not having fun. I am merely adapting to our current circumstances. And where are we going, anyway?" But John's already accelerated past him, and Rodney's only option is to follow.

He doesn't get his answer until John stops outside a dilapidated-looking diner just off the main street of the small town a couple of miles from the Sheppard family home. For a second, Rodney assumes the owner must have deliberately decided to go for a shabby-bohemian-chic look, until he realizes that won't be fashionable for another decade or so. The place doesn't look this way as some kind of retro-ironic style statement; it looks this way because it hasn't been painted for a while.

The diner might not be much to look at, but the expression on Sheppard's face isn't disappointed at all. He's staring up at the peeling frontage with something like wonder. "We used to come here when I was a kid—a little kid," he amends, before Rodney can point out the obvious. "All of us, every time we had something to celebrate. And then Dad got busy so it was just Mom and Dave and me, and then she got sick..." He trails off, his eyes darkening. "I came back to find this place, once, and it was gone. Will be gone. But it's here now. They served the best ice cream sodas anywhere."

Astonishingly, given the mound of pancakes he had for breakfast, the cycle ride has made Rodney hungry again. "I think I'm going to need some empirical data before accepting that proposition."

After carrying out a detailed and comprehensive review of the experimental evidence—two sodas each and a fudge nut sundae between them, which John totally eats more than his share of—Rodney concedes Sheppard may, just this once, be right.

They stay in the diner all morning, because they have nowhere else in particular to be. They talk about Atlantis, being careful, at first, to keep their voices low enough so that what they're saying doesn't carry beyond the sides of the booth they're sitting in. Then they realize, more or less simultaneously, that two adolescent boys discussing distant galaxies and aliens is going to attract absolutely no attention whatsoever. They start to have fun with it, taking it in turns to describe loudly and in detail places and events which would get both of them locked up if they tried the same thing as their adult selves in the future. For Rodney, who has spent his entire working life on projects so classified that even the non-disclosure agreements came with non-disclosure agreements, it's a liberating experience.

Some time around the second ice cream soda, Rodney says, "I used to be able to do this thing—" and then he stops, because sugar apparently has the same effect on his sixteen year old body as alcohol does on his forty year old one. "Okay, no, maybe not."

"Hey, you can't leave me hanging like that," Sheppard says. "What?"

Rodney looks steadily at him for a second and then, figuring the last vestiges of his dignity are long gone anyway, he lifts his ice cream soda and takes a gulp. He holds the fizzy mixture in his mouth for a couple of seconds and tilts his head back, trying to remember exactly how he used to do this. Then he closes his eyes and jerks his head forward. It works: the liquid jets out of his nose and back into the glass.

He uses a napkin to dry his face. On the other side of the booth, John is looking at him, the expression on his face a curious mixture of repulsion and reluctant admiration. "That was—gross."

"I have no idea why I did that," Rodney says, although he does, kind of. He's a teenage boy, and aren't all teenage boys gross?

"Seriously, McKay," John says, a grin slowly widening across his face, "that was really, really disgusting."

"I have two PhDs," Rodney says, trying to keep his face straight and not really managing it. He holds up the index finger and middle finger of his right hand for emphasis. "_Two_."

"You're a genius," John adds. And then he can't hold it in any longer. He makes a choking sound and—there's no other word for it—_giggles_.

It sets Rodney off laughing, too. He sags against the side of the booth and laughs until his eyes are watering and his stomach muscles hurt.

When, finally, he opens his eyes again, he catches sight of the mirror which hangs on the wall opposite their booth. Reflected in it, Rodney sees himself and John, two teenage kids drinking ice cream sodas, and the weirdest thing is, it doesn't look weird at all.

  
***

  
"Wait for it," Sheppard says. "Any second now."

Rodney and John are lying side by side on their backs on a grassy slope in an area of parkland just outside the town limits. The bikes are lying a short distance away, abandoned where the ground became too soft to ride on. It's an idyllic, isolated spot, and one, Rodney thinks, that John obviously once knew very well, given how easily he found it.

"What exactly are we waiting for?"

"Be patient, McKay."

Rodney hears it, then—a distant rumble, growing swiftly in volume until it becomes a screech of velocity and power. A plane—it looks like some kind of fighter jet—soars above them, surprisingly low. The roar of its engines is deafening, but it's still not loud enough to drown out John's delighted whoop as it flies directly overhead.

"F-15 Eagle," he says admiringly once the jet has gone, the only evidence of its passing a trail of vapor and Rodney's vibrating eardrums. "That was one of the C series; they're up to E now. They're still in service."

"There must be a base around here," Rodney says, trying to ignore the faint buzzing in his ears. Yes, his hearing's definitely been damaged. He'll be deaf before he's eighteen. It's a tragedy.

"Yeah, it's about thirty miles away," John says. "We're right under the flight path."

The buzzing in his ears recedes and, with it, the terror of incipient deafness. Rodney shifts on to his side, lifting himself on to an elbow. "How much time did you spend here?"

"A lot," John shrugs. "Whole days, sometimes. I used to bring supplies with me. Lunch, a pile of comics and a walkman."

"Didn't you have better things to do?" Rodney asks.

"Like what?"

"I don't know." Rodney waves a hand. "Hanging out at the mall or whatever you cool kids did."

John looks at him oddly, and doesn't answer. Suddenly, Rodney realizes he's been carrying around his own set of assumptions about what Sheppard was like when he was growing up. He's always subconsciously tagged Sheppard as one of the popular kids: smart, good-looking, wealthy—someone whom Cheryl Blanchard wouldn't have called the idea of dating _silly_. It hits him now, in a kind of paradigm shift, that he's been wrong all along, and that John was just as much out of step with his peers as Rodney was. Sheppard grew up inside a bubble of isolation which was more materially comfortable than Rodney's, but no less lonely.

He is still assimilating this revelation when John suddenly tilts his head to one side, half-narrows his eyes and then launches himself at Rodney. Caught off-guard, Rodney is pushed back on to the grass, and then they're tussling with each other, rolling backwards and forwards in the warm, soft grass.

"What was that for?" he demands when they break off long enough for him to catch his breath and speak.

"Wanted to," John grins. He has grass sticking to his face. "And you know what they say about teenagers."

Rodney looks at him.

"Poor impulse control," John elaborates.

Rodney rolls his eyes. "That's not an adolescent thing, that's just _you_."

But then John grabs Rodney by the shoulders and they're off again.

In the end it's Rodney, to his immense surprise, who gains the advantage, his extra height and strength worth more than John's superior skill. But it's not an easy victory, and by the time he's got John pinned between himself and the ground, they're both flushed and out of breath.

"Hey, I won," Rodney says. "I won," he repeats, because he's nearly certain this is going to be the only occasion he'll ever get the better of Sheppard in hand-to-hand.

"You won," John confirms. He doesn't look very upset about it. "There's a prize."

"What is it?"

John smiles lazily at him. "No one's gonna walk in on us here."

"Oh," Rodney says. "_Oh._"

All that rolling around has made John's tee-shirt ride up, exposing his stomach and most of his chest. Rodney puts his hand on to John's abdomen, palm flat and fingers splayed, and focuses on the way John's skin feels, warm and sweat-damp. John is lying still, as if he's holding himself in check, waiting for whatever Rodney's going to do next. Rodney hesitates, because this is different to the usual way the Arrangement works: it's normally John who sets the pace, determining what happens and how fast and to whom. But now, for whatever reason, he's letting Rodney take the lead, and Rodney is both anxious and very, very ready.

Rodney lowers his head and puts his mouth just about John's navel, running his tongue along his smooth, tight skin. He works his way up to John's chest and his nipples, where he experiences John's heartbeat as a series of pounding thuds against his lips. Then he moves on, all the way up to John's neck, where he kisses him in the hollow beneath his Adam's Apple and then works his way around to nip his earlobe between his teeth. John groans and gasps, but the best reaction comes when Rodney lightly drags his tongue from his ear to his shoulder. "Jesus," John chokes out, "Yes, yes, oh fuck, Rodney, yes—"

Rodney redoubles his efforts, and John wriggles beneath him, working feverishly to pull down first his own jeans and then Rodney's, whispering imprecations all the while.

And then they're hip to hip, naked against each other, and Rodney can feel John's erection pressing into his thigh. He twists a little so that their cocks are touching, actually touching, rubbing against each other.

He reaches down and takes hold of John's cock, delighting in the way it feels in his hand. The body may be different, but it's still John, and he is giving himself up to Rodney in a way that he hasn't before. And _this_ is what Rodney wants. The terms of their Arrangement—terms set by John—did not include this, and suddenly Rodney sees just what a poor deal he's been getting. It's as if, up until now, he's been allowed to have sex with John's body but not with John, the man who is his friend going into hiding when they touch as lovers. And while he's enjoyed John's body, the idea of getting all of him is quite possibly the biggest turn on Rodney has ever experienced.

"I want to do everything," he says. "Let's do _everything_."

"Yes," John hisses, eyes closed. "God, yes, I want, please, do it—" Then, abruptly, his breathing changes, becoming faster, shallower. "Oh, fuck, no, I can't—"

Rodney lifts his head, and sees that John's head is tipped back, his face contorted with the effort of maintaining a control which is even now slipping away from him. He sees the exact moment at which John gives in. John's cock jerks and come spills on to Rodney's hand as he bucks underneath Rodney, back arching, his body rising to meet Rodney's. It's like a chemical reaction, an explosion of heat pulsing out from the point where they touch, a blast wave that slams into Rodney and makes any resistance impossible. He shifts his hips, thinks, _Not yet not yet_—and then it's too late, and all he can do is give himself over to it completely.

They slump against each other, spent, breathing hard.

Rodney speaks first. "You came," he says accusingly.

"You came, too."

"Yes, but you came first," Rodney says, dimly aware that even by his and Sheppard's standards, this is a really stupid argument. Then vague dissatisfaction gives way to pride as he realizes what happened. "Hey, I made you come _just by talking_."

"Rodney, I'm fifteen and you had your hand on my dick. You could've been reciting pi to fifty decimal places and I would've come." John at least has the grace to look embarrassed as he grabs a handful of grass and cleans himself off. "Anyway, you didn't last much longer than me."

"We didn't even get to the really fun stuff," Rodney says with regret, pulling up his jeans. Then he brightens. "Although the advantage of being this age is a really short refractory period. We can probably try again in twenty minutes."

"I vote for that."

It strikes Rodney that this is the longest post-sex conversation they've ever had. Under the Arrangement, as soon as they're done they get cleaned up and head off in different directions, and the next time they see each other they both act like nothing happened.

Rodney is just starting to realize how much he hates the fucking Arrangement.

The late afternoon sun is starting to dip toward the horizon, and the sky is filling with darkening clouds. "If we stay here, we'll miss dinner," Rodney says.

John casts a sideways look at him. "Sex or food—it's like _Sophie's Choice _for you, isn't it?"

"I don't see why there can't be sex _and_ food," Rodney grumbles. This talk about dinner, and his recent physical exertions, is making him aware of his empty stomach. The wind is rising, and it's getting cooler. "Come on, it's going to rain. There are minor European monarchies with smaller palaces than your parents' house. We can always find someplace private when we get back." When Sheppard doesn't move, Rodney begins to feel a little annoyed. He prods John in the shoulder. "If we stay out much longer your father's going to have the National Guard out looking for you."

"Let him," John says. As an adult, he could probably make it sound grim and determined, but filtered through his fifteen year old voice and face it just comes across as sulky. Rodney's starting to suspect that the only real difference between 39 year old Sheppard and 15 year old Sheppard is that the adult version has figured out how to make acting like a teenager somehow look like grown up behavior.

"Okay, now you're being stupid," Rodney says. "You have to go back some time."

John looks at him, his expression earnest and oddly hopeful. "Today was a good day, right?"

For a second, the non sequitur puzzles Rodney. "Are you kidding? Yes. _Yes._ I mean, I had more fun today than I had in my entire adolescence—"

And then he gets it.

In his head, he replays the whole day, everything they've done since they left the Sheppards' house after breakfast, and as he does so, the true purpose of the day reveals itself. They ate ice cream and watched planes and then they had fumbling, over-too-soon teenage sex that was embarrassingly bad and yet somehow still the best thing that's happened to Rodney in years. And it was all John's idea, or done at John's instigation.

Sheppard has been trying to make a perfect day, and he doesn't want anything as inconvenient as reality spoiling it. It's like he's trying to construct a version of the past for himself that only includes the parts he wants it to.

Rodney could tell him that it really, really doesn't work like that.

Slowly, he says, "You can't edit the bad stuff out. Believe me, if it was possible, I'd be first in the line."

"I can try," John says.

The look on his face is obstinate and unreachable, and Rodney knows it's more than adolescent willfulness. He wishes Teyla were here. She'd drag Sheppard off somewhere and talk to him quietly and firmly and, if that didn't work, she'd hit him with sticks until he saw sense. Then he remembers that if Teyla were here, she'd be a teenager, too, and given the excess of hormones he and John have between them, her presence would probably just make things even _more_ complicated.

Rodney shuts his eyes for a second, searching for inspiration in the vast reaches of his brain. For once, it has nothing to offer him. If this were a technical problem—if John were a malfunctioning Stargate or a corrupted database—he'd have twenty different ideas about how to fix whatever was wrong. But John is _John_, and Rodney has never wanted so much to make something right, or had so little idea about how to start.

Awkwardly, he says, "Your mom—"

"Don't," John interrupts at once.

Rodney spreads his hands in exasperation. "Don't _what_? I'm not even supposed to mention her now? What the hell is wrong with you? I've seen you do six terrifying things before breakfast on a typical day, and you won't go and talk to your own mother?"

"It's not—" John starts, then stops. "Just leave it, okay?"

Rodney's starting to feel genuinely angry now. "Hey, _you_ were the one who dragged _me_ on this magical mystery tour of your psyche, remember, not the other way round. You can go right back to compartmentalizing as soon as we're home—God knows you're good at that—but you can't shut me out of this, because I'm _here_. If I have to relive your adolescence as well as mine, then I think I have the right to have some level of input."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Sheppard says tightly. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize my past was public property. Please, go right ahead, give me the benefit of your _deep psychological insight_."

Rodney knows when he's being goaded, but since he's been asked, he doesn't see any reason not to give a straight answer. "Fine. You want to know what I think? I think you need to go and see her."

"Don't tell me what to do," John snaps, and Rodney almost wants to laugh, because _that's_ a teenage line if he's ever heard one.

"I'm not telling you to do anything," he says. Then he amends, "Well, yes, I am telling you to do this. But only because I'm right."

His voice thick with sarcasm, John says, "Yeah, and you'd know, because your relationship with your mother was _so good_."

"At least I _had_ a relationship with my mother," Rodney shoots back. "I didn't put her on a pedestal that was so high I couldn't even bring myself to _look_ at her!"

John goes very, very still, and for a moment Rodney thinks he's going to hit him, for real this time.

"Fuck you, McKay," he says at last.

Rodney feels something wet hit his bare arm, and when he looks down he sees the bloated, angry raindrops landing on the grass at his feet and making damp streaks on his tee-shirt. Somewhere in the distance, sheet lightning flashes and a few seconds later he hears the distant rumble of thunder.

The bike ride back takes a long time because they have to cycle much more slowly in the downpour, and the silence between them makes it feel longer still. Water sloshes under the wheels of their bikes and their sodden clothes stick to them, and when Rodney has to blink away the moisture in his eyes, it's easy to tell himself it's just the rain.

***

  
They're late for dinner, of course.

It doesn't help that by the time they finally get back they're both soaked through and thoroughly bedraggled. When Isabella meets them inside the door, it feels the same to Rodney as coming back through the Gate after a mission to a particularly inhospitable world, the main difference being that Carter doesn't generally tell them off for staying out in the rain and then send them to their rooms to get dried and changed.

When they finally skulk into the dining room, wearing dry clothes but with still-damp hair, John's father is waiting for them. He is sitting at the huge wooden table like a judge presiding at a trial. He looks thoroughly pissed off.

They take their places in silence, and seconds later Isabella appears to serve their meals, which are only slightly dry and congealed from having been reheated. Then she disappears again, presumably to have her own dinner in the kitchen, where it will be cozy and warm and she can watch TV. Rodney briefly wonders if it would be really rude to ask if he could join her.

Patrick picks up his cutlery. Rodney spears food on to his fork and realizes, with a kind of dull surprise, that for the first time since he woke up aged sixteen, he's not feeling hungry. He makes himself eat anyway, attempting to focus on his food rather than the oppressive silence which has settled around the table.

Rodney's never been able to handle silence.

"Sorry," he bursts out, when the strain of not saying anything gets too much to bear. "We're, um, sorry. For being late."

"There's no need for you to apologize," Patrick says, addressing Rodney but looking at his son. "You're our guest. It was John's responsibility to bring you back here on time."

At that, John raises his head and looks at his father, but he doesn't say anything.

"Your mother wanted to join us this evening," Patrick tells his son. Rodney glances at John to see his reaction, but can't decipher Sheppard's expression at all. Patrick goes on, "Your mother _wanted_ to join us, John, but she started to feel tired again while we were waiting for you and she had to go back to bed. After dinner, you should go and tell her you're sorry."

In a level, clear voice, John says, "No."

Patrick's hand stops halfway to his mouth. Calmly, he puts his fork down, the food on it untouched. "That wasn't a request, John."

"I know," John says, equally calmly. "I said no."

"You will go upstairs and speak to your mother or—"

"Or what?" John asks. "What are you gonna do? Ground me? Or maybe it'd be easier if you sent me away, like Dave. It wouldn't make much difference, because I'm gonna leave in a couple of years anyway, and I won't be back until you're _dead_."

It's not the anger in his voice that chills Rodney, it's the lack of it.

"That's enough," Patrick says icily. "Go to your room."

John stands up. His chair tips over behind him and clatters on to the floor. "I am not a fucking _child."_

"You will not use words like that in my house," Patrick barks, standing up as well.

"Then I guess I'll add it to the list, along with all the other words I'm not allowed to use," John says caustically. "Like _cancer_ and _malignant_ and _metastasized_ and _terminal_."

Patrick blinks once, and his head jerks a little as if he's just received a physical blow.

"Did you think I didn't know?" John demands. "Why did you think I wouldn't go with Dave? I was _scared_ to leave. I knew what was coming. Even though you wouldn't tell me anything, I _knew_—"

Patrick closes his eyes for a moment. There are lines around his eyes; he looks exhausted, weary. "Doctors can be wrong," he says.

"Not this time," John says. "Not about this."

"John—"

"I was fifteen," John says. Rodney looks at Patrick, but his eyes are still shut and he doesn't appear to have noticed that his son's using the wrong tense all of a sudden. "I was old enough to figure it out. I thought I was the only one who'd realized. I thought I had to keep it a secret. Do you know how hard that was? Do you?"

"John, your mother is very sick, but she is going to get better—"

"My mother is going to_ die_."

On the last word, John's unreliable fifteen year old voice cracks and breaks. He presses his hand to his mouth, as if to hold in any other unwanted truths that might be preparing to escape. Then he turns and walks out of the room. Rodney hears the thumps as he rapidly climbs the stairs.

Rodney looks to Patrick expectantly, but John's father doesn't move. "He's just upset," he says after a few seconds. "He'll get over it in a little while."

Rodney stares at him. "You really think so? Because, take it from me, in _twenty years_, he still won't have gotten over it."

He gets up and leaves without waiting for a reply.

**PART THREE**

  
Rodney goes upstairs with every intention of talking to John right away, but by the time he's standing outside the closed door of John's room, his resolve is weakening. He wishes, not for the first time in his life, that people could be more like mathematical equations: solvable.

As he's standing there, unsure what to do, he hears a sound coming from the other side of the door. The noises are soft, muffled by the corner of a blanket or a fist pressed to the mouth, but he recognizes the hitched, irregular breaths and small noises of choked-off misery for what they are almost at once.

Rodney doesn't let himself think; he just pushes the door handle down and goes in.

John is lying on his side on the bed, his face hidden by the pillow he's got it buried in. He stiffens as Rodney comes in, but he doesn't look up. His shoulders are shaking a little with the effort of not crying more loudly.

Rodney goes over to the bed and crouches down beside it. Tentatively, he puts a hand on John's arm, and is relieved when it isn't shrugged off. Most of John's face is hidden, but Rodney is pretty sure he can see the faint shine of wetness on his cheeks.

"Um," he says. "You okay?"

John doesn't answer for a second and then, when he whispers, "Yeah," his voice wavers in a way that contradicts the assertion completely. He swallows hard, clearly making an effort to calm himself. "I'm thirty-nine years old," he says in a low voice. "I am a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force. I've served in war zones and I'm the senior military officer on an expedition to another _galaxy_ and—" He breaks off, his breathing hitching again. It's not working.

Rodney could have told him it wouldn't, because the truth is that although John is all those things, he is not any of them _here_ and _now_. Right now, he's a fifteen year old kid whose mother is dying in the room down the hall. All things considered, that's probably worse than all the wars and aliens of two galaxies combined.

"C'mon," Rodney says, "move over," and he hops on to the bed next to John, who has to scoot across to make room for him. He loops one arm over John and pulls him close, embracing him. John's shoulder blades poke sharply into Rodney's chest, and Rodney thinks how fragile this version of John is, how vulnerable.

They lie like that, spooning together in silence, until John says, quietly, "She's gonna die in November. November 23, 1984. She died in that room. She's gonna die in that room."

Rodney squeezes John a little more tightly.

John draws in a breath and continues, "And after that... we're going to fall apart. She was the glue, you know? She held us together, and we didn't even know it, not really. It only got worse when I got older. She would've understood; Dad didn't. The last time we fought he said... he said she would've been ashamed of me."

Another sob escapes him, and Rodney shifts his position a little so he can rock John, comfort him. It feels natural and right in these bodies in a way he can't imagine it would if they were the ages they should be. They're not children—far from it—but they're not adults, either. They've been fooling themselves to think otherwise.

"What's the point of being here if I can't change it?" John asks, and Rodney doesn't think the question is aimed at him so much as it is the universe at large. "Why make me watch it again when I can't do anything?"

"Is that why you didn't want to see her?"

"All the things I've done," John says. "All the impossible, incredible things, and I can't change this. It's just one life. Why not just one life? It's not fair."

Rodney closes his eyes, and rests his chin in the hollow between John's neck and his shoulder. "June 15, 1999," he says. "Day my mother died. I'm really bad with dates. I can never remember if my niece's birthday is the first or second of February. But I remember that."

"In the park, with Jeannie," John says, "you were talking about her in the past tense."

"She had a stroke in her sleep. Ironic, really: the only thing she did peacefully in her whole life was die." Rodney stops, takes a breath, steels himself to continue. "Anyway. I was clearing out her apartment, afterward, and I found... she'd kept everything. Every report card I ever got, my old piano exam certificates, school science fair prizes—_all_ of it. Boxes and boxes of it, all organized and labeled and even _categorized_."

"What did you do with it?"

"I kept it, of course. It's all in storage. It'll be valuable archive material for the Smithsonian. You know, for my future biographers."

"Right." John sounds as if he might be smiling a little. Rodney hopes he is.

"And I figured that way at least part of what she'd left me would be useful."

"She left you other stuff?"

"Yeah, lots of things," Rodney says. "The insecurities, the neuroses, the personality flaws of which I am, contrary to general opinion, not entirely unaware. Which, again, will be terrific fodder for my future biographers. Not so great for me, though."

John gives a small, shaky laugh. "So, here we are, not even old enough to vote, and we're both completely screwed up already."

"Pretty much," Rodney agrees. "Look, you could've thought about anything when you sat down in that chair, but you remembered _this_. You wanted to come back here."

"I thought it was the last thing I wanted," John says, "You know, I got as far away as I could, Afghanistan and Antarctica and finally all the way to another galaxy. I thought I'd left everything behind, but I hadn't. I was carrying it around with me; it was in my head the whole time."

"Yeah," Rodney agrees. "I think that's how it works."

John is silent after that, and gradually Rodney feels his breathing become steadier and more regular. Rodney's forehead is resting against the back of John's head; John's hair is tickling his nose. The scents Rodney associates with John are sweat and blood and gun oil and that odd but not unpleasant ozone-y smell that is peculiar to the jumpers. He can't smell any of them now, though, just good-quality soap.

"I want to kiss you," Rodney says. "Can I?"

John's answer is to twist his whole body around so that Rodney is suddenly looking right into his eyes. His face is still red and a little blotchy from crying. He nods.

Rodney kisses him gently, lips to lips and then lips to cheeks, lips to forehead, lips to chin. John exhales with the softness of a sigh, and accepts each one as the small offering it is.

"I'll stay," Rodney says, when he's run out of places to leave kisses. "If you want me to stay."

John hesitates. "No."

Rodney lets out a breath. "Okay. I forgot... that's not really how it works for us, is it?"

"No," John says, and Rodney thinks for a second that he's agreeing, until he continues, "No, I didn't mean that, I meant—I want you to. I want you to stay. It's just really not a good idea with my dad around."

"Oh. I, uh—right." Rodney can't decide if he's more disappointed that the answer's no or elated that it would've been yes. "Maybe when we get back."

"When we get back," John echoes.

A few minutes later, Rodney gets up from the bed, pulls a blanket over John, and makes his way to the guest bedroom.

  
***

  
The next morning there are no pancakes. Rodney thinks this may be Isabella's way of punishing them for coming in late the previous evening. In all other respects, though, breakfast follows the same pattern as the previous day, with Rodney and John doing more eating than talking, while Isabella makes up a separate breakfast for John's mother.

But when she starts to lift the tray, the morning routine veers off in a new direction. John puts down his spoon, leaving his cereal to get soggy in the bowl, and says, "It's okay, Isabella. I'll take that up to mom." He makes it sound like it's no big deal, but then, Rodney thinks, Sheppard has raised making things sound like they're no big deal to an art form.

Isabella smiles widely, plainly delighted. "What a nice thing to do, John. You're a sweet boy."

John looks mortified, because if there's one thing neither fifteen year old kids nor Air Force Lieutenant Colonels want to be called, it's _sweet boy_.

He picks up the tray in much the same manner that Rodney's seen him heft a gun before walking toward a known threat. Rodney hesitates for a second, not sure whether Sheppard wants to do this alone, then decides that he's stood at John's side too many times to break the habit now. He abandons his half-eaten breakfast and gets up from the table.

"I'll get the doors," he says.

John doesn't answer, just nods once. He's got that calm look again, and he looks, to Rodney, both very young and somehow, at the same time, even older than Rodney knows he actually is.

The stairs are wide enough that they can climb them side by side. At the top, John turns right, and Rodney follows him, down the hall, past John's room, past the guest room Rodney's staying in, past another couple of doors. Their destination is the very last door.

John is holding the tray; it looks like it's made of solid wood and is laden down with breakfast dishes and Rodney thinks suddenly that it must be very heavy for John to carry, all by himself. He reaches for the doorknob.

"Wait," John says.

Rodney waits.

"You'll be right outside."

Rodney's not sure if it's a question or a request or just something John needs to hear said out loud. He errs on the side of caution, and answers. "I'll be here. How is it that you military types put it? Oh, yes—I've got your six."

Rodney's never picked up the knack of making military terminology sound credible; even to his own ears, it always sounds stupid coming from his mouth, and he figures the effect will be heightened when that mouth is a teenager's. He's right, and the remark achieves what he means it to: the tension around John's eyes subsides a fraction.

"Okay," John says. "I'm ready."

Rodney opens the door, and John goes in.

Minutes pass. Rodney stands in the Sheppards' immaculately decorated upstairs hall, waiting. He counts the number of flowers in the pattern on the carpet, then he squares it, then squares it again, then takes the result and works out all its factors and its third, fourth and fifth roots.

The door opens again, and John appears. He looks different: genuinely young, not just pretending to be.

"Come on in," he says. "I want to introduce you."

The bedroom is just as tastefully and expensively decorated as the rest of the house. Large windows, framed by soft drapes, overlook the huge gardens; a small dresser, which looks to Rodney's admittedly untrained eye like an antique, sits in front of them, its surface cluttered with medicines and pill-bottles. The room's appearance is spoiled somewhat by the bed, which is metal and plastic and clearly belongs in a hospital ward.

The woman sitting up in the bed is wearing a soft quilted jacket over her pajama top and a red silk scarf tied around her head, its tails trailing down over her shoulders in much the same way as her hair probably used to. The breakfast tray is sitting across her lap, its contents so far untouched, as far as Rodney can see. Her face is too thin and her complexion is too pale, but her smile restores a lot of the attractiveness that illness has taken from her.

She looks a lot like John. No: John looks a lot like _her_.

"Rodney," John says, not looking away from his mother's face, "this is my mom, Alice," and his voice is soft and strained and full of wonder and sadness.

"Hi," Rodney says. "It's, um. It's nice to meet you." A moment later he adds, "Mrs. Sheppard," because he is, after all, sixteen years old and meeting his best friend's mom for the first time.

Alice Sheppard turns her head slowly, the simple movement clearly an effort. "Patrick told me we had a house guest. He says you're helping John with his math."

Rodney starts to agree and then stops. "Actually, he doesn't need much—well, any—help. We, uh, we only said that so I could come visit."

Alice laughs softly. "I won't tell," she promises. "And I hear you're going to college this Fall. You must be a very intelligent young man."

"He is," John says, and there's something in his voice that sounds a lot like pride. It makes Rodney's heart feel strangely full. "He's the smartest person I ever met."

Rodney notices that John's mother isn't sitting up so much as she's being propped up by the tilted end of the bed and the pillows. When her smile fades, the lines on her face—lines that make her look older than she surely is—reappear at once.

John sits down on the chair next to the bed and pushes the breakfast tray forward a little, encouraging his mother to take more notice of it. "Isabella made this for you."

Alice picks up a fork and prods at the egg and toast, but without enthusiasm. "I'm sure it's delicious, darling, but I don't have much of an appetite just now."

"Try," John says, and Rodney hears the unspoken, _for me_, that follows.

"I guess I should," Alice says. Gamely, she lifts a forkful of egg. "Why don't you talk to me while I eat?"

John opens his mouth and then closes it again, and then looks at Rodney, and Rodney knows, suddenly, why John asked him to come in. He almost laughs, because who would've thought that after all this time, they'd finally run into a situation where Sheppard needed him for his ability to talk?

Rodney is about to say something—because if there's one thing he can do with consummate ease, it's fill a silence—and then a second realization comes, as sudden as the first. This is not his silence to fill; it's John's. The silence of decades.

Rodney looks back at John and says, "Tell her about Atlantis."

John glances at him, pushes his lips together and shakes his head, but Alice has already heard. "You mean like the place in the myth? Is this something from a movie you boys went to see?"

"No," Rodney says, "it's a real place."

John doesn't say anything for a second. Then he reaches out and takes his mother's hand, the one not holding the fork. Their hands are almost identical, Rodney notices: both small and fine-fingered.

"Go on," Rodney prompts him.

"It's a city," John says at last. "A long way away from here. It's in the middle of an ocean—a bright blue ocean—and there's no land for a thousand miles in any direction. When you fly to it, you come in low over the sea, and the first thing you see is something shining on the horizon. Then, when you get closer, you can see the towers and spires. They look like they're built on the surface of the water. Sometimes, in the mist, the whole city looks like it's floating. And when you get really close, you can hear it, and it's like a song in your head, welcoming you home."

Rodney blinks, swallows. Thinks: _That's what it's like for him—_

"I wish," John whispers, "I wish you could see it."

Alice's eyes are closed. "I can."

The moment stretches, crystallizes, as if the bedroom and the three of them have somehow been transported to the heart of a black hole, to a place the universe's physical laws cannot penetrate, where time is irrelevant, meaningless.

Then Alice sets down her empty fork. The metal clinks against the china plate, and time starts moving forward again.

"It feels like it's been a long time since I've seen you, John."

"It has been," John says, very quietly. Then he looks up at Rodney. "I'm gonna stay a while."

Rodney nods, and turns to go. He's almost at the door when he hears John, behind him, say, "Thanks."

Rodney just nods again. For once, there's nothing he wants or needs to say.

  
***

Left to his own devices, Rodney decides to go exploring. He doesn't find the suspected bowling alley, but discovers the house has an actual game room with a pool table, and a _library_. Well, maybe it's really just a room with a lot of books, but that's close enough for jazz, as far as Rodney is concerned.

Better still, there's a whole shelf devoted to science fiction. Rodney feels vindicated: he knew John had to have more books than he saw in his room. He runs his thumb along the spines with relish, before selecting half a dozen volumes, and settles in for the rest of the morning, kicking off with a hardback copy of William Gibson's _Neuromancer_. A glance inside the dust jacket confirms that in 1984, it's just been published. Rodney hasn't read it since he was in college.

Several hours later, he's just starting to think he'd quite like a snack when John's father walks in.

"Rodney," Patrick says in greeting, as if last night's dinner had been a pleasant and cordial affair. "I see you're making yourself at home. Where's John?"

"He's talking to his mom."

This simple statement produces an unexpected reaction from Patrick; an emotion which is intense but too brief for Rodney to decipher writes itself across his features and then almost at once disappears again. It might be relief, although it's gone before Rodney can be sure.

"That's... good," Patrick says. There's an armchair opposite the couch Rodney is sprawled on (at sixteen, his back doesn't protest no matter what contortions he inflicts on it), and Patrick sits down in it. "John... John doesn't make friends easily. You seem to... to care about him. I think right now it's very important for him to have a friend, a good friend." He pauses. "I hope you know you're welcome here, Rodney."

Rodney doesn't know what to say to that, so he settles on, "Thanks, Mr. Sheppard."

Then Patrick, in an apparent attempt to shift the conversation back to more comfortable territory, nods at Rodney's book and says, "Are you enjoying that?"

"Yes," Rodney says honestly, because he's just spent the _whole morning reading_, and when was the last time he got the chance to do that? "John has pretty good taste," he adds, and holds up the cover of _Neuromancer_ for Patrick to see.

Patrick Sheppard doesn't smile, but the sides of his eyes crinkle a little in a way which is very, very familiar to Rodney. "Oh, you think so? Well, I'm sure John will be pleased to know you approve of his reading habits."

The penny drops. Rodney stares at the shelf of science fiction novels, and then at Patrick Sheppard, company CEO, utilities magnate, businessman. Patrick looks back at Rodney, wearing that same expression of private amusement that until right now Rodney had thought was unique in two galaxies. In his eyes, Rodney sees a man who knows the gap between who he is and how the world sees him is a large one, and who prefers to keep it that way.

John might look more like his mother, but he's his father's son.

The look on Patrick's face changes to a frown of concern. "Is something wrong?"

Rodney says, "Mr. Sheppard, can I use your phone?"

  
***

The phone rings just once before it's answered and a small, high-pitched voice says, "'Lo?"

At seven, Jeannie had just discovered what telephones were for, Rodney remembers. "Jeannie, it's me, your brother."

"Mer!"

Jeannie sounds more pleased to hear his voice than she will at almost any point for the next two decades. Rodney takes a moment to feel a little depressed about that. "Are you—Is Mister Huggy okay?"

"Mister Huggy's sad," Jeannie says, matter-of-factly. "They're shouting again. He doesn't like it when they shout."

"Yeah, I know. I don't like it either." He lets out a breath. "Look, that stuffed toy family you're looking after in the closet... you keep doing that. All that practice is going to pay off for you. You're not gonna be like Mom when you grow up. You're gonna get it right."

"Okay," Jeannie says, and for a second Rodney almost thinks she might have understood that.

"Now go get Mom," he says.

"Okay," Jeannie says again. Then there's silence at the other end of the line, as Jeannie abandons the handset to go and get their mother.

In the silence, Rodney wonders what he's going to say to her. _'You really screwed me up by pushing me to achieve all the things you didn't'_ is accurate, but even Rodney recognizes it's hardly conducive to establishing constructive communication.

Then he's run out of time to think about it, because his mother's voice is saying, coolly, "Meredith. So you finally found time to call us."

Just her voice, and her tone, are enough to make all the old feelings of anger and inadequacy come welling back up again, like bile straight out of the pit of his stomach. But there's distance between them now—miles and years and galaxies—and somehow he finds himself able to swallow it down again.

"I had a window in my packed schedule," he tells her, because two can play that game.

There's a second of silence, and then his mother says, "Well, did you call for a reason? I'm sure the Sheppards won't appreciate you pushing up their long distance bill for no good reason, Meredith."

"John's father runs a phone company, Mom. One weekend phone call to Canada isn't a big deal." Although a phone call across twenty four years is a big deal. A really big deal. That reminder of what it is that he's actually doing here prompts him to try again. "I called because I need to tell you—" He stops. Swallows.

"Meredith, what? Are you homesick? Do you want to come home, is that it?"

Rodney is gripping the phone's handset so hard that his fingers are going numb. "You're gonna be proud of me," he says. "I need you to know that. Mom, I'm going to do things. Amazing things."

There's a pause, just long enough for Rodney to realize that he has no idea what response he expects or even wants to hear.

Then Irene McKay says, brusquely, "Of course you will. You're a genius."

"Do you believe that?" he asks. "Really?"

"Oh, Meredith," his mother says, and he can almost see her rolling her eyes, the mannerism utterly familiar because she passed it on to him. "You're my son, aren't you?"

Rodney doesn't answer for a long time. At last he says, "Yes, Mom. Yes, I am."

"Meredith, are you all right? You sound faint. Your blood sugar must be low, go and eat something." Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, "By the way, I miss you."

He closes his eyes. "I miss you, too, Mom."

It's true. He does. He's just never admitted it before.

After the call is over, he stands with the phone in his hand for a long time, the dial tone buzzing in his ear.

  
***

  
"It's true what they say," Rodney muses.

"What is?"

"That youth is wasted on the young. Being sixteen when I was sixteen was grim, but being sixteen now that I'm forty? Is actually pretty great."

The days are starting to acquire a routine. In the morning, John takes breakfast to his mother and then spends time—less or more, depending on how she's feeling—just sitting with her, while Rodney reads. After lunch, when Alice needs to rest, they go to see a movie (Rodney had forgotten how many good movies came out in 1984: Ghostbusters! Footloose! The Karate Kid! Classics, all.) or go for a bike ride. They almost always end up back here, at John's favorite airplane-viewing spot, where jets streak overhead and no one can see them.

John is lying on his back, his head resting on his folded arms, legs splayed comfortably. He is basking in the afternoon sun, loose-limbed and at one with the world around him. Rodney's always thought that relaxed is John's default attitude, but now he realizes that's not the case at all: Sheppard's just supremely good at faking it. This, though—this is real deal. Fifteen year old John Sheppard at rest is a sight that demands to be savored, and Rodney puts down the book he's reading (Niven's _Ringworld_) so he can spend a couple of minutes appreciating it to its fullest.

After a while, John says, "We can't change anything," and it's not a question or a challenge, he's just observing the way it is. He turns his head so he's looking at Rodney. "But if you could—would you?"

"God, yes. I'd make sure I published _my_ paper on point to point energy transfer before that bastard Johansson. And I'd dump my tech stocks before the dot com bubble burst in 2001."

"It was a serious question."

"And that was my serious answer. Do you know how much I could've made if I'd sold six months earlier? It was going to be my retirement nest egg. Although now that my career has developed in, well, let's say _riskier_ directions than I formerly anticipated, that's admittedly less of a consideration." He pauses. "You?"

"I'd skip getting married, for a start." John's tone is light, but there's an undercurrent of something more reflective in it that makes Rodney wonder how much he's been thinking about it since they've been there. It makes him reconsider his own answer.

He lets himself think—really think—what it would be like, to pick up his life at sixteen, knowing exactly the path that lay ahead of him, the good decisions and the bad ones, the triumphs he could relive, the mistakes he could avoid. For a brief, shining second, the possibilities are intoxicating: he could do it over, get his life _right_ this time.

Then he looks at John and realizes that maybe, completely by accident, he's already gotten it right.

"You know what?" he says at last. "No. I wouldn't change anything. There are too many variables, and where I am is... It's okay. It's better than okay."

John nods slowly, looking at him. "Yeah. Me too." He hesitates, then says, "I'm glad you're here. If you hadn't been, I don't know if I could've..." He trails off. "I don't know how I brought you back with me, but I think that's why I brought you. And, uh, I thought you should know that."

Rodney opens his mouth to ask him what he's talking about, and then—just this once, thank God—his brain kicks into gear in the nick of time.

Rodney had used the memory machine himself, although to much less dramatic effect than Sheppard. But by using it he must have inadvertently allowed it to store whatever set of access protocols it needed to gain access to his consciousness. And then, while Rodney had been asleep, his mind open and receptive, Sheppard had sat down in the memories chair and thought about the things he wouldn't let himself during the day. The things he kept hidden in locked boxes deep inside his head most of the time, and when he came to face them, his subconscious had known he couldn't do it alone, even if he hadn't. John didn't just need to come back here; he needed Rodney to come with him.

"There is one thing I'd change," Rodney says. John gives him a questioning look, and Rodney shrugs. "I'd spend a lot less time mooning over Cheryl Blanchard."

"Who's Cheryl Blanchard?"

"No one important."

It starts right then, a faint tingling sensation just behind Rodney's eyes. When he tries to lift his hand to touch his face, his arm is strangely unresponsive, as if it's no longer his arm. He can still see the thick, golden sun falling across his bare ankles, but he can't feel it anymore, and the ground is dissolving beneath him, so that he has the sensation of floating, weightless and unbound. It feels like waking up, except that up until right now, he'd thought he was awake.

With a final effort, he lifts his head just enough to look down at his lanky sixteen year old body, still in possession of just enough consciousness to feel regret that he will never feel like this again, coupled with gratitude that he _did_ get to feel like this again.

"Hey, Rodney." John sounds both very close and very far away. "See you in twenty years."

Twenty years, Rodney thinks. In that time, he's going to go to college, get a degree and his doctorates; he's going to publish his work and win prizes for it; he's going to have crushes and affairs and once he'll even think he's in love; he's going to start working for the US military and go to Area 51, where he'll spend a couple of years creating mathematical models of wormholes before he actually sees one. He's going to fuck things up, he's going to tell Sam Carter that someone on her team should be left to die and expect her to be okay with that and she's going to have him sent to Siberia and he's going to deserve it. He's going to spend nearly five years not speaking to his sister and he's going to tell himself it's because she's wasting her talent when it's really because he's jealous that she's happy and he's not. When Elizabeth Weir asks him to work on the Pegasus project he's only going to say yes because he thinks he's ruined his chances of making it in the main Stargate program. He's going to meet John Sheppard in Antarctica and go to Atlantis, and then, finally, his life is going to start.

Rodney's last thought is that it can't come soon enough.

**********  
**Epilogue**  
**********

  
When Rodney wakes up in Atlantis's infirmary, he's forty years old again, with a slightly receding hairline and a back that's stiff after spending six days lying on his back unconscious while the supposed experts in Ancient technology who work for him tried to figure out how to turn off the machine keeping him that way.

Sheppard's not there; Keller had deemed it too risky to move him from the lab where they'd found him, insensible in the memory machine chair. His superior genes (she doesn't actually use the word _superior_, but Rodney feels it's being unfairly implied) allowed him to recover more quickly once Zelenka had managed to pull the plug on their metaphysical excursion to the past, which means that by the time Rodney's finally given the all clear and allowed to leave, John's already been pulled into a catch-up briefing with Carter and Lorne. Rodney is hooking his radio over his ear, about to call him, when it buzzes and Zelenka says, "So, you are no longer asleep on the job, yes? This is good, because we have four, no, now it is five, separate crises requiring your attention."

It's six crises by the time Rodney gets to the main science labs.

He does see John in the next twenty-four hours, but only in passing in the hallways and across tables at various meetings. Sheppard's as flat out as Rodney is, trying to clear the backlog of work and decisions and problems which have accumulated while they've been mentally (if not physically) absent.

Teenagers get to spend whole days doing nothing much; grown men who have jobs and responsibilities and people—_lives_—depending on them don't. It's not that Rodney wants to be sixteen again, not really, but sometime around one o'clock in the morning, when he's staring at a block of Ancient code which is still refusing to compile three hours after he started working on it, he finds himself thinking wistfully about how it felt to spend a whole afternoon just lying in the grass, watching planes soar overhead.

Exactly three minutes later, he's at the door of Sheppard's quarters.

"Hey," John says, stepping to one side to let Rodney come in past him. He's barefoot, wearing sweats and he looks rumpled and tired. "I'm sorry, I kept meaning to come find you, but things have been kind of crazy since we got back."

"Tell me about it," Rodney says. "Apparently you and I are not the only people to have mastered time travel. The entire science department has discovered the secret as well, or at least I have to assume that, given that they appear to have squeezed an entire year's worth of incompetence into the space of _six days_." He flops down in the room's only chair and eyes the paperwork which John is still attempting to bring some kind of order to. "I see the great military bureaucracy didn't grind to a halt in your absence."

"I kind of wish it had," John says. "I've got nearly a week's worth of reports to review and sign off on before tomorrow's databurst."

Rodney sighs. "Being a grown up _sucks_." Then he remembers something else that sucks. "Incidentally, we need to find time to sit down and figure out what each of us is putting in our reports on what happened, because I don't know about you, but I intend mine to be the very definition of selective detail."

John nods. "If you leave out my wallpaper, I won't mention your ice cream soda party trick."

The thing Rodney likes about Sheppard is that they really do understand each other.

Then John yawns and Rodney remembers that they both have a lot of things they have to do before the day can be officially stamped complete. "Well," he says, a little awkwardly, "that's all I came to say. Hello, goodbye. See you at senior staff tomorrow." He turns to go.

He's just about the palm the door open when he feels John's hand on his arm. He turns around again, and John is looking at him. There's a hesitancy in his expression which makes him look almost like his fifteen year old self again. Maybe, Rodney thinks, the uncertainty was always there, it's just that he's only now learned to see past the adult façade to recognize it.

John leans forward and kisses him. His face is rough with stubble and he smells like cheap military issue soap and the insides of a jumper and Rodney wants to breathe him in as deeply as he can, because this is _his_ John Sheppard. John kisses him with less urgency and raw physical need than he did when he was fifteen, but with far more desire.

"Stay," John says. "I want you to stay."

This time, Rodney does.

~ END ~


End file.
